Do you know of any coaches who have been accused of sexual abuse but can still pass their background check and are in good standing with USATF?
This lawsuit is about a tennis coach was credibly accused of sexual abuse, charged, tried in 2010, and ultimately there was a hung jury, he was not convicted. The state of California permanently revoked his teaching credentials in 2011.
No longer eligible to coach at the high school level, he moved to the club level, forming a club (or whatever the tennis equivalent is) with his local association, who most likely knew, or should have known, about the allegations against him, given that they were public and had been covered in the local media. Not surprisingly, he continued to abuse athletes.
He was reported to law enforcement in 2014, and the allegations were found to be credible, but the prosecutor declined to charge it. It is unclear to me how US Tennis responded to this, the lawsuit did not focus on this.
Eventually more victims came forward, he was tried and convicted and was recently sentenced to 255 years in prison.
This lawsuit alleges that either the background check was not performed, or that they were negligent in how it was done. I strongly suspect that he was checked, and he passed, because he was not convicted in the first case.
So this comes down to whether or not the local Association and/or US Tennis were negligent in allowing him to be a member in good standing in 2011, despite it being public knowledge that there had been credible allegations against him.
USATF did have a similar case in 2005 with Vernon Smith. Twice a jury was hung and he was never criminally convicted, however, the USATF Board of Directors at that time banned him for life.
If you know of any similar cases in our sport, and there has not been any public action from USATF against that person, please report it to safesport@usatf.org.
They may already know, but it is better to have something over reported to them than for them to not know.
There is tremendous institutional knowledge at the Association level in our sport. It is very important that volunteers share these historical cases with the national office, because they may not know, especially if the case was not widely reported in the local media.
You don’t think they are coaching anymore? What if they moved out of your area? Memories fade and stories fall off the internet.
Err on the side of reporting.
