Examining and Comparing the First Public Olympic and Competitive Sports Misconduct Registry with the National Sex Offense Registry

ABSTRACT

In 2017, the U.S. Center for SafeSport launched the first public disciplinary sports registry listing individuals accused of engaging in harmful behavior against child and adult athletes. Our study reviews information from 1,161 individuals on SafeSport’s sports registry. Of the individuals on the sports registry, 22% were concurrently listed on the national registry for sexual offenses. Relative to individuals listed only on the sports registry, those on both registries were 4.5 and 1.4 times more likely to have sexual misconduct allegations and allegations involving a child, respectively. Of those on both registries, 31% were on the national registry approximately seven years before appearing on the sports registry. We discuss whether and how public registries represent effective strategies for crime prevention.

KEYWORDS:

• Harassment
• athlete
• discipline
• misconduct
• organized sports

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ We ended data collection in early 2020 to account for any potential influences of the COVID-19 pandemic on reporting and registration practices..

² Among the 122 individuals who were on both the sports and national sex offense registries and who had dates of registration for both, we observed several noteworthy trends. There were differences in three characteristics between individuals who were first registered on the national sex offense registry compared with those first registered on the sports registry. Namely, they were less likely to have porn (20% for those registered on the national registry before the sports registry versus 10% national after sports registry), less likely to be Black (4% for those registered on the national sex offense registry before the sports registry versus 17% national after sports registry), and more likely to be involved in gymnastics (28% for those registered on the national sex offense registry before the sports registry versus 12% national after sports registry), hockey (16% for those registered on the national registry before the sports registry versus 10% national after sports registry), and volleyball (12% for those registered on the national sex offense registry before the sports registry versus 3% national after sports registry).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by USA Lacrosse and U.S. Center for SafeSport | Funding number: [90081583].

Notes on contributors

Rebecca L. Fix

Rebecca L. Fix is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mental Health at the Bloomberg School of Public Health. Dr. Fix’s research focuses on promoting ethnoracial equity in the juvenile legal system and on prevention of sexual and physical violence among young people.

Elizabeth J. Letourneau

Elizabeth J. Letourneau is the Director of the Moore Center for Child Sexual Abuse Prevention and Professor in the Department of Mental Health at the Bloomberg School of Public Health. Her research predominancly includes the development and testing of perpetration prevention interventions to prevent child sexual abuse.