Abuse can be inflicted by coaches, adult volunteers, staff members or teammates. Don’t be lulled into a false sense of security because a coach is nice. Individuals who sexually abuse children often know they need to create a sense of safety and trust with the people around them, so that concerns are dismissed.
Top executives at one of America’s most prominent Olympic organizations failed to alert authorities to many allegations of sexual abuse by coaches — relying on a policy that enabled predators to abuse gymnasts long after USA Gymnastics had received warnings.
An IndyStar investigation uncovered multiple examples of children suffering the consequences, including a Georgia case in which a coach preyed on young female athletes for seven years after USA Gymnastics dismissed the first of four warnings about him.
"I think you've just got to be clear with (coaches) and clear with the kids, to know what's an appropriate behavior and not appropriate behavior."
"Butler was under a lifetime ban from a different national organization, USA Volleyball, for initiating sexual relationships with three underage players in the mid-1980s. The advocates said that that by affiliating itself with Butler, the AAU, the largest youth sports group in the nation, was ignoring reforms it put in place after sexual-abuse allegations against its former president four years earlier."
Hewitt, 76, a deposed Tennis Hall of Famer who has been on house arrest at his South African citrus farm since his convictions, is expected to surrender to police, who will transport him to prison. The sentence means he will serve at least three years.
The Globe Spotlight team has turned its investigative focus on private schools, beginning its series this weekend. "At least 67 private schools in New England have been affected by allegations of sexual abuse by employees disclosed over the past 25 years."
"The schools, many with rich histories and famed alumni, have often struggled to balance the need to respond robustly to abuse allegations with a desire to guard their reputations. Historically, few allegations were reported to law enforcement, and many schools avoid publicizing them even today. Getting past the schools’ reticence is a challenge; because these are private institutions, they are exempt from public records laws. And when the Globe sent surveys to 224 private schools on their experience with sexual misconduct allegations, only 23 — about 10 percent — chose to reply."
The Australian Olympic Committee has asked the Brazil not to select former Australian Olympic swimming coach Scott Volkers for their Olympic team, amid child abuse allegations.
The Australian Olympic Committee president, John Coates, wrote to Brazilian committee president Carlos Nuzman last week to express the committee’s disappointment that Volkers was never convicted for allegedly abusing swimmers in the 1980s and 1990s.
As reported in July 2014, three of Volkers’ former swimmers, Julie Gilbert, Kylie Rogers and Simone Boyce claimed they were abused as children while training in Volkers’ swim squad in the 1980s and 1990s. A detailed account of the three swimmers’ allegations can be read here.
Essentially, there is this: How many allegations can there be that Paterno was told something, only for his supporters to keep claiming he didn't know anything?
It came in the form of a single line in a court order on a related insurance coverage case involving Penn State, and its full ramifications can't immediately be gauged.
But that line was eye-popping in itself.
The line in question states that one of Penn State's insurers has claimed "in 1976, a child allegedly reported to PSU's Head Coach Joseph Paterno that he (the child) was sexually molested by Sandusky."
Child sex predators control their victims with fear and lies. Authority figures — priests, teachers, coaches — evade justice by intimidating their victims.
"Their career is a house of cards built on the silence of victims fearful of confronting the status and prestige of their victimizers," Placher said.
Read MoreCHICAGO — J. Dennis Hastert, once among the nation’s most powerful politicians, was sentenced on Wednesday to 15 months in prison for illegally structuring bank transactions in an effort to cover up his sexual abuse of young members of a wrestling team he coached decades ago.
ALBANY — The effort to pass legislation that would allow sexually abused children to bring lawsuits as adults will get a personal assist next week from Olympic speedskater Bridie Farrell.
Farrell, who has accused Olympian speedskater Andy Gabel of molesting her when she was just 15, will take part in a press conference and roundtable discussion in Albany on May 3 to build support for the Child Victims Act.
Many childhood sexual abuse survivors dream about confronting their predators in a court of law.
Jimmy Carlino actually got that opportunity five years ago, when legendary New York basketball coach Bob Oliva pleaded guilty in a Boston courtroom to two counts of rape of a child.
WASHINGTON — When calls for his removal from office reverberated through the capital a decade ago, Speaker J. Dennis Hastert struggled to explain why he had not aggressively investigated allegations that a Florida lawmaker had sent flirtatious messages to a teenage boy who had served as a House page.
At that perilous moment, an impassioned group of supporters stepped forward to speak up on Mr. Hastert’s behalf: wrestling coaches.
“Denny Hastert is a good and honorable man — and one of wrestling’s own,” Leo Kocher, the wrestling coach at the University of Chicago, wrote in late 2006 in a letter distributed to high school and college coaches.
“The wrestling community must reach as many people as it can through calling talk radio, letters to the editor, and any other way in which public opinion can be moved,” he wrote. “Denny Hastert is one of the finest people to ever hold membership in the wrestling community.”
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