Alex Cooper has alleged that her BU soccer coach, Nancy Feldman, sexually harassed her while she played for her team. In her new Hulu docuseries, Call Her Alex, the Call Her Daddy podcaster claimed she noticed Feldman “really starting to fixate on me, way more than any other teammate of mine, and it was confusing,” per People. “[It] was all based in her wanting to know who I was dating, her making comments about my body and her always wanting to be alone with me,” Cooper continued in the doc, which premiered Sunday at the Tribeca Festival.
Throughout Cooper’s time on the team—from 2013 through 2015—Feldman allegedly commented on her legs, asked about her sex life, and put her hand on her thigh. “It was this psychotic game of, ‘You want to play? Tell me about your sex life,'” Cooper shared, claiming that Feldman asked her to get in a car with her alone on multiple occasions. “I felt so deeply uncomfortable,” added the podcaster.
When asked why she waited so long to speak out, Cooper explained that she was “attending BU on a full-tuition scholarship. If I didn’t follow this woman’s rules, I was gone.” She did tell her parents, who contacted lawyers. Those lawyers, however, allegedly warned Cooper’s family that the university would likely drag a case out for years. BU also allegedly refused to take action when Cooper’s parents provided written documentation of Feldman’s abuse. The coach retired in 2022.
While Cooper is “not ashamed” that it took her a decade to speak out, the process of working on the documentary made her “question a lot, and I think this documentary, as difficult as it was to explore, I actually think this is just the beginning.”
“The minute I stepped back on that field, I felt so small,” she recalled during a Q&A after the show. “I just felt like I was 18 years old again, and I was in a situation with someone in a position of power who abused their power, and I felt like I wasn’t the Call Her Daddy girl. I wasn’t someone who had money and influence or whatever. I was just another woman who experienced harassment on a level that changed my life forever and took away the thing I loved the most.” She added: “It’s really opened my eyes to how difficult the system is, and it’s so built against us as women.”
If you or someone you know has been a victim of sexual abuse, text “STRENGTH” to the Crisis Text Line at 741-741 to be connected to a certified crisis counselor.
