ABSTRACT
​
Federal legislation, PROTECTING YOUNG VICTIMS FROM SEXUAL ABUSE AND SAFESPORT AUTHORIZATION ACT OF 2017 (the “Act”), took effect January 1, 2018. The Act is intended to make youth participation in Olympic and Paralympic sports safe from emotional, physical and sexual abuse and neglect. The Act creates a class of persons (“covered individuals”) who are both subject to its proscriptions and bear a personal responsibility to promptly (within 24 hours) report to law enforcement, and thereafter to the United States Center for Safe Sport (the “Center”), upon learning of facts creating a suspicion of certain defined categories of child abuse or neglect of a youth participant. In a federal District Court lawsuit filed by a purported victim, liability for child abuse may include attorney’s fees, costs of suit, expert fees, exemplary damages and the greater of actual damages or $150,000.00. Within the Act, Congress appointed the Center with exclusive jurisdiction to set policies and procedures, including training, for implementation of the Act. The Center, however, has created policies and procedures and a mandatory training video tainted by an overwhelming implicit bias against coaches, officials, athletes, promoters, administrators and medical personnel. The Act and its implementation should be promptly modified to:
​
(1) recognize and acknowledge that the vast majority covered individuals consistently exhibit a high standard of ethics, generosity and talent in youth sports in America;
​
(2) create a more balanced arena for both administrative arbitration and federal litigation of disputed claims of child abuse and neglect;
​
(3) abandon the current SafeSport training video (and any derivative training videos for parents and youth competitors); and,
​
(4) in lieu of the existing SafeSport training video, create a new training video which is:
(a) free from implicit bias against covered individuals;
(b) fair and balanced in its presentation of the nature of child abuse and neglect; and,
(c) clear in the proposition that the duty to report only arises and is only appropriate upon learning facts which, after reasonable scrutiny, create a “reasonable suspicion” of child abuse or neglect, as reasonable suspicion is defined in federal constitutional law.
​
​