It’s the Law: Sex offenders in youth sports

While I do not practice criminal law, I still receive calls on criminal matters on occasion. The recent arrest of a convicted sex offender coaching at Club Shoreline volleyball for soliciting sex from an underage girl generated far more than the usual number of calls.
It likely has to do with six degrees of connection, as opposed to six degrees of separation (if confused, Google “Kevin Bacon”), to this particular crime.
One, my daughter played for Club Shoreline for two years.
Two, I run a small volleyball club in Scotts Valley called Diggerz.
Three, I serve as a volleyball coach not only with Diggerz but at Scotts Valley Middle School.
Four, I am chairman of the Children’s Advocacy Institute’s (CAI) Council for Children at the University of San Diego (www.caichildlaw.org) where a major focus is abused/neglected children.
Five, I previously served on the Santa Cruz County Child Abuse Prevention Council.
Six, I represented abused and neglected children for many years in my practice.
The most common question I’ve received is not necessarily legal, but more common sense. How is it that a convicted sex offender was allowed to coach? The answer is simple — he’s not; at least according to Northern California Volleyball Association rules. There are four clubs in the county that I’m aware of: Club Shoreline, Diggerz, Watsonville Starlings and Main Beach. All are part of the NCVA.
Conviction of a crime that leads to being a registered sex offender automatically disqualifies one from being involved with the NCVA. Moreover, the NCVA requires that any adult who is affiliated with a club must pass a criminal background check. Not just coaches, but team managers and assistant coaches.
Since the individual was coaching, I can only conclude that Club Shoreline purposely avoided running him through the NCVA’s criminal background check or ignored the results of that check.
Another question I’ve received is why people could not find this coach on the Megan’s Law website that tracks convicted sex offenders (www.meganslaw.ca.gov). I didn’t know the answer to this, so I went searching.
As it turns out, the Penal Code exempts about 25 percent of registered sex offenders from being listed. There are several levels of disclosure under the law. Some categories of sex offenders require listing on the website while some offenses are specifically excluded. Then there are optional categories where an offender can apply to be excluded from the website.
Sex offenders, who ply their trade in secret, logically want to keep their transgressions secret so my assumption is that if they qualify, they ask to be excluded.
Another frequent question is the extent of civil liability that might exist — both as to the coach and Club Shoreline itself. Obviously, any child abused by this coach has an action in civil court against that coach. But she also has an action against Club Shoreline for either negligently or purposely allowing the coach to have access to that child.
It is often difficult for a child to go through the legal process that a lawsuit entails so for that reason the statute of limitations for an offense against a child generally doesn’t begin to run until the child reaches 18.
Under certain circumstances, however, special statutes for child sexual abuse allow the limitations to run even longer. Statutes of limitation can be very complicated, though, and it isn’t possible to give even a basic overview of all their permutations in this column.
Youth sports can be one of the greatest growing experiences of childhood and a dedicated coach can add immensely to a child’s self-esteem and development.
In my experience, the vast majority of youth coaches do it for love of the sport and the kids. Nevertheless, there will always be those few who are not there to give of themselves, but to take your child’s childhood away.
The NCVA promotes SafeSport (www.safesport.org) which is a resource that all parents should utilize. Still, I am unaware of any place on the NCVA website that confirms that a coach has cleared a background check.
I am hoping in the near future that the NCVA will provide, for each club, a list of the adults cleared through a background check. It is just one more step in keeping our children safe.
– Gary Redenbacher of Scotts Valley is an attorney in private practice. E-mail him at ga**@re*********.com