An outside investigation into the United States Tennis Association’s safeguards system made 19 specific recommendations about what the body that governs tennis in the country and runs the U.S. Open Grand Slam tournaments can do to protect players from sexual misconduct and other abuse.
62-page report The report, written by two attorneys, Mary Beth Hogan and David O’Neill, of Washington, D.C.-based Debevoise & Plimpton, was presented to the USTA’s board of directors last week and made public Thursday.
“The USTA complies with all U.S. Center for Safe Sport requirements and has adopted policies and procedures that are in some respects more protective than the Center’s requirements. … However, we have identified several ways to enhance player safety that the USTA should consider adopting,” Hogan and O’Neill wrote.
The report comes less than two months after a federal jury in Florida awarded $9 million to a tennis player who said the USTA failed to protect her after she was sexually abused by a coach at a USTA training center as a teenager.
O’Neill and Hogan, the former Justice Department criminal division chief, wrote that because their “investigations did not include an examination of specific incidents involving allegations of sexual misconduct other than an examination of whether the USTA met its obligations when the abuse was reported to the USTA,” they “did not investigate the events that led to the Florida incident.”
The USTA also noted that it was a defendant in four other lawsuits – one of which was settled – related to sexual abuse of tennis players over the past 20 years.
The lawyers said they conducted a “thorough, independent review” of the USTA’s “current policies and procedures regarding preventing, reporting and responding to abuse, including sexual misconduct.”
The investigation included interviews with USTA employees and access to hundreds of the organization’s documents.
The report also included an assessment of safety practices across 51 other US sports governing bodies, Paralympic sports federations and the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee, as well as guidelines set out by the US Center for SafeSport.
“The Board expressed its intention to incorporate the proposal into the USTA’s Safe Play program,” according to the report.
“We view this report, including the recommendations from the Debevoise team, as an important step in our efforts to further ensure a safe environment for all involved in the game of tennis,” USTA CEO and Executive Director Lou Shea said in a written statement. “We are working to implement the recommendations as thoroughly and expeditiously as possible.”
The 19 recommendations are:
— 7 that are “focused on preventing fraud before it happens.”
— Nine are about keeping “individuals known to have cheated” away from USTA facilities and events and making them more widely known, because, according to the report, “one of the biggest concerns parents and players have is that individuals known to have cheated because of adverse action by the center or criminal prosecution will attempt to continue participating in tennis, including appearing as spectators at USTA-sanctioned tournaments.”
— both “seek to increase the number of individuals, particularly parents, who are Safe Play approved and who receive Safe Sport training,” but “coaches are often unaware that they may be manipulating both underage athletes and their parents, and problematic behaviors can be especially difficult to identify when parents expect coaches to promote their child’s success in sports.”
And it “requires additional staffing and resources” for the USTA’s Safe Play program to implement the recommendations.
The investigation found that the USTA has only three employees “dedicated to developing and implementing and monitoring compliance with the Safe Play Program” and that its three player development campuses (New York, Florida and California) “have no staff dedicated to overseeing player safety.”
