Sexual Abuse Cases Involving Children On Rise: Can Background Checks Help?

2020-04-20T18:43:23-07:00

Last month, the U.S. Youth Soccer Association (along with its California affiliate) settled a lawsuit to the tune of $8.2 million dollars for failing to run background checks on their volunteer coaches—a decision that led to the molestation of a 13-year-old girl by a coach. Had a background check been run, the organization would have known that this coach had a past criminal history, including domestic violence and battery against his spouse, which would have disqualified him from preying on innocent young victims. The American Youth Soccer Organization has also been dealing with multiple lawsuits related to sexual abuse by coaches who haven’t been properly vetted. Sadly, these types of incidents are not isolated to one or two organizations [...]