Protecting Players

Hugh school coaches are mandated reporters so the assistant coach would legally be required to report any sort of abuse

 

It's state law in Illinois (though this only mentions trainers -- I believe the actual list of professions is much longer): https://mandatedreporter.com/blog/w...023, Illinois,help protect children from harm.

 

Anyone that works with minors. Coaches, teachers, camp counselors, lifeguards, etc… Witnesses of suspected child abuse are legally required to report.

 

As illini mentioned above, if you work with kids, you are required to report. I actually reported a case of abuse between two adults in my professional life/career because I was concerned as a mandatory reporter due to my coaching that I could be held accountable, better safe than sorry. The police determined it was consensual, but I am not risking it.

 

Wait a second, you don't think having mandatory reporters (and it's not just Illinois, other states have them also) would work, but you want an anonymous webpage with AI deciding if the report is valid?

How about this... the organizing body (whether national, regional, state, or local) requires clubs to have a designated hierarchy for reporting suspected abuse. That could be DoC, a Board member, then the entire board. Then they also include a designated person(s) in the organizing body, and that flows all the way up. Anyone who wants to report suspected abuse can go do so at any level. Then each report must be investigated, with a written document on what the investigation did, and what what the findings were?

So, let's say a club does have a culture of such abuse. Then someone should be able to report to someone at the state level.

Yes, we should protect kids. But I think there also needs to be a concern for false accusations.

 

Like a club ombusdperson position?

 

The eclipse issue was multifaceted. The players and parents did not report and accepted the behavior because they thought a scholarship was worth it. The coaches likely feared for their livelihood. This lead to no investigations occuring that could have held those other coaches liable for not reporting. All it would have taken was one of those staff members to have some courage.

 

I think what you're missing in the "mandatory reporting" scenario is SCHOOL employees are mandatory reporters. I don't think that any soccer club coaches are required by law (unless their "day job" has it) to be mandatory reporters. Maybe all youth coaches should be.

 

My state soccer org has every adult involved with a youth club as a mandatory reporter. For physical/sexual abuse they need to notify police, state child welfare line, club, state org, ussf, us center for safe sport. For emotional abuse they should notify the club point person and the state org.

I think that flows from the state gov, ie they looked up if their policy has legal standing, but I was leaving the club admin side of things just as they were revising the policy..

 

Totally agree. I'm just not sure anonymously is the best way to do it.

 

I appreciate you starting a dialogue around this topic. Any attention and effort towards the development of a system that protects kids from abuse is a good thing. Its obvious there is a need for it in youth sports.

Just trying to think through the anonymous piece, wondering how that would work. If you got an anonymous report of some abuse, what would be the next step?

 

I read through an earlier post where you broke down some of the initial steps that would determine how to address the report, who would be responsible for what, etc. I definitely think you are on to something; thinking in the right direction.

One problem with the anonymous reporting ( as in no identified victim) is that is not a great/problematic position to be in for anyone involved, especially the victim. What if you have an anonymous report that a coach might be sexually abusing a player for example but you have no victim. How do you sit on that? If you have no victim to verify the abuse how would you stop it? You can't necessarily remove a coach if you can't prove that something like that is occurring and the than there is the issue of false reporting. I suppose even when you have actual victims identified it can take years to create a case against someone.

I don't know about Eclipse as much..... other than what I have read. With say Larry Nasser or even that Penn State nightmare, the problem wasn't with people/victims not speaking up, it was the deliberate negligence on a systematic level. Those institutions ignored the reports and obviously cared more about greed/ winning, etc. than the victims. Common sense would tell you that you might be open to huge liability, if as an organization, you neglected to act on reports, and that was obviously not a deterrent.

In the case of Eclipse, you think that if parents/ players had more ability to speak up it would have stopped it?

 

I did an online training for my job today and it made me think of this conversation. There is a lot of training out there that could be applied to the youth sports setting.


Psychological safety: Feeling comfortable asking a question, raising a concern or making a decision, without the fear that something bad or negative is going to happen.

Dangers of low psychological safety

• Dangerous silence: people who are aware of the risks of a situation do not dare to speak up for fear of being called out or punished for it.
• Fear of failure: people are more focused on avoiding failure than using it as a learning opportunity to improve and innovate. Also, people tend to make more mistakes that could have been avoided if psychological safety levels would have been high.

 

As much as I love that sports has been a big part of my children's life - girls/women sports is not really a healthy environment at most levels after under littlies. Even park team coaches play favorites and have players that are just insecure, mean individuals. And women coaches even at higher levels often act immature or like dictators and treat the bench like second class citizens. Potentially damaging for a player's mental health.

Overall, my children have had a great experience with only a couple of toxic coaches over the last 15 years, but one of them really destroyed my player's confidence. It took a couple of years to bounce back. Consider yourself blessed if your player has always been in healthy, competitive environments. And make it a priority when selecting teams by asking former players/parents their experience.