Error processing SSI file
Dave Shrader, whose sons Josh, 14, and Greg, 13, play soccer for a Dearborn Heights youth team, said, "At one time all our coaches were parents. Now we have several coaches who don't have kids in the program, and we thought that was OK because we're running these background checks. I'm no longer comfortable with that."Coaches slip crime checks; kids at risk
Flawed data: state records lack key criminal information
Zak Torzewski teaches kids how to climb a wall at the YMCA in Southgate. Experts say background checks of coaches may come back clean, but cannot reveal how they will treat the youngsters in their charge.
Comment on this story
Youth hockey coach Matt Tapping of Saline raped a 13-year-old boy he met in an Internet chat room.
Fellow coach Matt Cipriani of Wayne, who told Wayne Youth Hockey Association officials about Tapping, was later caught trying to set up a sexual liaison with a 14-year-old boy on the Internet.
Both men could coach children in Michigan today because their state criminal history checks come up clean.
Coaches with criminal backgrounds are able to land youth sports jobs with little fear of being exposed because checks are incomplete or not run at all.
Shortcomings in the criminal record system and a lack of oversight by youth sports officials leave parents who believe a thorough background check has been conducted with a false sense of security and their children at risk.
“That’s scary,” said Dave Shrader, a former coach whose son now plays soccer for a Dearborn Heights youth team. “It’s always been so reassuring to tell parents we do these background checks on coaches and managers.”
High schools, Little League baseball and Pop Warner football teams, soccer and hockey leagues and community recreation programs rely on state police criminal databases for background checks on coaches, unaware of major flaws.
For example, absent from the Michigan State Police felony database in checks run by The Detroit News last week were the convictions of Tapping and Cipriani, as well as that of a St. Clair Shores coach who committed a sexual offense involving a minor; the arrest warrant for a western Wayne County coach who fled the country after raping one of his players; and the arrest of a Grosse Pointe Park coach charged with being a drug kingpin.
“There’s no such thing as too strong of a background check when it comes down to the safety of your child,” said Rory Turner, 43, of Detroit, whose 10-year-old daughter, Dajourie, plays Police Athletic League sports. “Parents are putting their trust in coaches being around their child, and you can’t wholeheartedly trust someone who’s coaching your son or daughter unless you do these background investigations.”
Yet some leagues sideline safety by failing to do the bare minimum check.
The News investigation found:
* Five percent, or 4,189, of the 83,507 youth sports coaches who supervise 593,396 kids in Michigan undergo no background checks.
* About a quarter — 18,182 — are checked only through the state’s sex offender registry, which does not contain all sex offense convictions.
* The 33,997-name sex offender registry dates only to October 1995; contains no information on other types of felonies, even if they involved children or violence; includes no active warrants or cases; has no data from other states, and fails to include many sex offenses that were plea-bargained into other types of convictions.
* More than half, or 49,842 coaches, are run through a Michigan State Police felony database, which does not include all convictions and is often not current.
* That database, I-CHAT (Internet Criminal History Access Tool), does not contain arrest warrants, convictions suppressed by judges or convictions from other states. League officials told The News they believed it did furnish such data. Also, exact identifying information must be entered for online searches.
* There is no uniform method for conducting criminal background checks. For example, Little League, which has a presence in every state and 80 countries, and Pop Warner require local leagues to check names against state sex offender registries, but they leave policies on more thorough checks to local leagues. National youth soccer and hockey associations have no requirements.
* Leagues such as PONY Baseball, and 52 Metro Detroit recreation departments, do no background checks at all. Volunteer coaches are taken at their word and investigated only if an incident arises.
* 20,000 of the state’s 30,000 high school coaches undergo only an I-CHAT check because they are not teachers. The remaining coaches, who are teachers, submit to a full FBI fingerprint check, the most thorough criminal background check available.
“It’s scary knowing some of the coaches aren’t checked,” said Jeff Deliz, 17, a senior at Clinton Township Chippewa Valley. “It doesn’t seem right. If most coaches are being checked, I think all of them should be.”
Shrader added, “At one time all our coaches were parents. Now we have several coaches who don’t have kids in the program, and we thought that was OK because we’re running these background checks. I’m no longer comfortable with that.”
Tattered safety net
Hockey coach Tapping, according to police reports, met a 13-year-old boy in an Internet chat room, enticed him into a meeting, and took him to a hotel. Police say Tapping assaulted the boy orally and anally as the child held his shirt over his eyes and cried.
Tapping continued to coach until Cipriani told league officials about Tapping’s arrest. Tapping was convicted of third-degree criminal sexual conduct.
A year later, Cipriani was caught in a Wayne County sheriff’s sting operation when he met who he thought was a 14-year-old boy on the Internet and arranged a meeting. Cipriani, former manager of a school ice arena in the Grosse Pointes, pleaded guilty to using the Internet to commit a crime.
Steven Crawford, an assistant boys and girls track coach in St. Clair Shores, thought he was talking to a 13-year-old girl on the Internet and arranged a meeting. He was caught in the same Wayne sheriff’s sting and pleaded guilty to committing an Internet crime.
None of their criminal records appears on I-CHAT, the very database hockey officials, school districts and others use to perform background checks on coaches.
“I can see why parents would be upset,” said Jeff Delguidice, boys basketball coach at Dearborn Fordson High for the past eight seasons. “Not that anyone doesn’t deserve a second chance, but as a parent I would want to know who’s coaching my kid.”
Most coaches who are checked are run through I-CHAT, a database that has 1.5 million names and dates to 1929, but has serious shortcomings.
Judges have the discretion to send defendants into pretrial diversion programs, even for some sex crimes. Those records would be suppressed and would not appear in the database.
The database never was intended to carry conviction information from other states.
Finally, league officials must have the exact name and date of birth, as well as race and sex, of each coach to run an I-CHAT check.
The state’s soccer and hockey leagues, with more than 24,000 coaches, require I-CHAT checks.
Even final convictions can take months to make it into the database if the court involved sends in records on paper, as several still do.
“We’re at the mercy of the reporting agencies,” said Tim Bolles, the Michigan State Police official who runs I-CHAT. “Either we haven’t received all the information from the reporting agencies to build the conviction record, or the record has been built but has been suppressed.”
Sex crimes missing
The sex offender registry has similar shortcomings.
Sex offenders are required to register with the state if they move to Michigan from elsewhere or if they change addresses within the state. If offenders do not register, there is nothing police can do unless the matter is reported to them.
Finally, people arrested for sex crimes, particularly first offenders, are allowed to plead guilty to lesser crimes, such as assault. Their conviction then would not be reported on the sex offender registry.
The names of 17,000 Little League coaches and officials are run through only the state’s sex offender registry.
“I can’t begin to tell you what a waste of time that is,” said Camille Gamble, director of marketing and public relations for Rapsheets Criminal Records, whose online search engine, Rapsheets.com, covers all but a handful of states.
A search of Rapsheet’s database of 170 million records disclosed 22,798 people in Michigan who were convicted of sex-related offenses but who do not appear on Michigan’s sex offender registry. The names of Crawford, Cipriani and Tapping were listed on Rapsheets.com.
“I think they should be much more extensive in their research,” said Greg Kampe, the men’s basketball coach at Oakland University for the last 20 seasons who also has coached Little League for nine years and will coach a team of 11-year-olds this summer.
“In my nine years no one has asked me for my social security number.”
Last year, nine men who applied to become Little League coaches were found on their state’s sex offender registry in Rapsheets.com checks, said officials at Little League headquarters.
“And those were the nine honest ones,” said Richard Robell, a police officer and Dearborn Heights youth soccer coach. “They put down a real name, so they actually could be checked. If they had used an initial instead of a first name, or a wrong date of birth or something, they wouldn’t have shown up, either.”
Some Little League officials have balked even at the minimal requirement of checking names against sex offender registries.
“We’ve had leagues that this year left our program because they refused to do the absolute minimum that we require for background checks,” said Little League spokesman Lance Van Auken. “But we’re sticking to our guns, forcing our leagues to do this because it’s the right thing to do.”
Exaggerated claims
With each youth sports league in charge of creating its own background-check policy, parents are often left in the dark about exactly what is being done.
The News found two of the largest youth sports sanctioning bodies, for example, exaggerated or misstated the number of checks they run.
The Michigan State Youth Soccer Association claims it has run checks through I-CHAT on more than 13,000 coaches and team officials once when they first join their leagues, then again when their driver’s license expires.
Yet, when The News obtained I-CHAT’s full client list under the Freedom of Information Act, the records indicated that the state soccer association ran only 5,478 checks in 2003. Soccer officials say the state must be wrong, but state officials stand by the number.
In addition, the Michigan Amateur Hockey Association said it performs checks on 11,000 coaches and other officials every year. State police records, however, indicate the hockey association ran a total of 3,533 checks last year. Hockey association officials said they could not explain the discrepancy but are investigating.
“Background checks are critical,” said Eric Fornasiero, who has coached kids for nine years in Rochester-Avon programs and has two children who play there now. “We shudder to think there would be someone out there who would hurt a child.”
At their word
Some leagues take the word of volunteers that they have clean records and perform no checks at all.
“I’ve been coaching 28 years, and I’ve never been checked once,” said PONY Baseball regional director Frank Kutas of Lansing.
PONY (Protect Our Nation’s Youth) requires no background checks on the 2,400 coaches in charge of more than 10,000 kids in Michigan, although some leagues take it upon themselves to use the sex offender registry.
“We’re exploring going to background checks,” said Ken Kibit of Garden City, PONY director for Wayne County. “The nature of what we’re seeing nowadays makes us want to be more careful.”
Under the Freedom of Information Act, The News obtained records from 52 Metro Detroit recreation departments and found only 18 conduct checks on youth coaches through I-CHAT.
Only a handful had any written policy on the subject, and none required full FBI fingerprint checks.
“It’s hard enough to make sure that every team has a volunteer parent,” Scott Van Meter, assistant director of the Rochester-Avon Recreational Authority, where more than 900 kids play on 98 teams, wrote in a note. “Telling them we would be doing background checks might prove disastrous — even though it’s the right thing to do.”
Detroit News staff writer Tom Markowski contributed to this report. You can reach Fred Girard at (313) 222-2165 or fgirard@detnews.com.
Copyright © 2004
The Detroit News.
Use of this site indicates your agreement to the Terms of Service (updated 12/19/2002).