Athlete safety and protection is one of the most-discussed issues in youth sports today. The Protecting Young Victims from Sexual Abuse and Safe Sport Authorization Act of 2017 was enacted by Congress on Feb. 14, 2018, becoming federal law. The act requires the implementation of prevention training and policies, creating a new “standard of care” for all organizations offering youth sports programs. “From our perspective, athlete safety has always been a priority,” said Lance Anderson, SportsEngine’s vice president of corporate sales. “We recognize safety is a key pillar of youth sports.”
SportsEngine was founded in 2008 to provide time-saving online solutions for sports administrators, coaches and parents seeking to avoid tedious – and often unsecure – pen-and-paper information and payment processing. As the NBC Sports-owned but self-operated platform has evolved, so too has its array of safety and security acquisitions, integrations and partnerships.
SportsEngine combines the background screenings offered through the National Center for Safety Initiatives and Southeast Security Consultants, Inc., both companies are 2017 SportsEngine acquisitions, with an array of other online safety and security measures such as encrypted payment processing and the ability to prevent unauthorized users from accessing an organization’s data and membership information.
“Permissions management is so important,” Anderson said. “With an organization’s data, we understand the importance that only those with clear authorization have access to information. That’s a critical component within the safety of the organization.”
Anderson said SportsEngine is also working with organizations that, beyond background screenings, seek to prevent abuse by identifying potential perpetrators. “It’s all about educating people on what are the signs to look for,” Anderson said.
Trish Sylvia, co-founder and CEO of NCSI, said national statistics reveal that one out of every ten children under the age of 18 will experience some form of abuse. The people who inflict that abuse sometimes are the same ones who sign up to become coaches, team managers and administrators, or volunteer to serve other prominent roles, in youth sports organizations.
“There hasn’t been a group I’ve spoken to in 15 years where somebody didn’t come up to me afterward and say, ‘This was real to me, this happened to me. Thank you for doing what you are doing,’ ” Sylvia said.
NCSI estimates its background screening programs have saved thousands of people from harm and millions of dollars in losses to organizations.
NCSI has performed hundreds of thousands of criminal background checks, and those checks have produced reports on convictions for crimes as serious as homicide, kidnapping, rape and attempted rape, manslaughter, lewd acts on a child, armed robbery, unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor, sodomy, and murder.
Those results came back on individuals who willingly, and brazenly, submitted to a background screening with the intention of working with youth or other vulnerable populations.
“The numbers show that this is real to all of us,” Sylvia said. “Whether we know it or not, we all know people who have been abused.
Still, convincing organizations why background screenings are important often is a vital first step in the process, Sylvia said. There’s no sense in comparing the differences in companies that offer background screenings — and how they collect their data — if there isn’t a deep-rooted conviction to keep children safe, she added.
Bargain-basement background screenings can cost as little as five dollars. As with any product, budget background checks are a buyer-beware proposition.
“Unfortunately, the name background check is applied to a pretty wide realm of methodologies,” Sylvia said. “One of the common myths is that a background check is a background check. We know better.”
Sally Johnson, Executive Director of the National Council of Youth Sports, was part of the initial group that founded NCSI in 2004. A year earlier, when insurance companies were threatening to drop child abuse and molestation from organizations’ insurance policies because of a lack of proper vetting of employees and volunteers, Johnson spent hundreds of hours comparing the practices of background screening vendors, interviewing more than 27 companies as part of the process.
“Yes, it is true, you only get what you pay for,” Johnson said.
Here are some key questions to ask when choosing a background screening provider:
How up-to-date is their database?
“When we did our research, we found that a background screen through one vendor might be five dollars and with another vendor it might be $20 or $25,” Johnson said. “What we found is that vendors charging five dollars hadn’t updated their databases in years.”
Are local sources part of their search?
Johnson remembers one organization paying a two dollar cut-rate price for a background screen that consisted solely of reports from a national sex offender registry.
“I said, ‘Why are you paying the two dollars? It’s a free report,” she said.
Added Sylvia: “There is not one common repository in the U.S. for criminal information, one place where you can go to find everything. That’s why we apply a more layered approach to screening. We do use those multi-jurisdictional databases, but we also do local searches, county courthouses searches.”
Syliva added that NCSI uses a coverage matrix that is hundreds of pages long, breaking down the various local databases and other information resources available state by state.
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