Crimes need court, not SafeSport

All the US Center for SafeSport had to do was pick up the phone or send an email. But anyone else could have done that, too.

The US Center for SafeSport is going back to court (Do they ever leave court? Don’t they get tired of that place?). Two gymnasts are suing the Center, USA Gymnastics, their former training center and that facility’s owners, alleging that all of those parties failed in their basic duties to protect them from their former coach, Sean Gardner.

Gardner was arrested in August on child pornography charges. The images in question are from 2017-2018, around the time that he was first reported to the Center and USA Gymnastics. The plaintiffs assert that had the Center or USA Gymnastics taken action against Gardner in December 2017, or if their gym had taken action against Gardner in response to complaints in late 2018, or if anyone had done anything in response to multiple complaints between 2020-22, Gardner would not have been able to sexually abuse them and other gymnasts.

I wrote about this today for The American Spectator:

The gym fired Gardner in July 2022 after the Center issued a “temporary suspension,” which immediately barred him from all sporting activities. Despite remaining in a temporary status for three years until his arrest this summer, the Center’s sanction removed him from sport....The crux of the suits is that the Center could have sanctioned Gardner at any point in the preceding four and a half years.

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However, the suits also bring to light several thornier issues.

The suits paint a picture of a dangerous, and ultimately tragic, over-reliance on the “mandatory reporter” function of the Center, USA Gymnastics, their employees, and the owners and employees of the gym.

Anyone at any time could have called 911 or the police’s non-emergency line and made a report. Or they could have gone online to file a suspicious activity report with local, state, or federal law enforcement.

For all of the imprecations over the last 25 years of “If you see something, say something,” Americans’ ready use of tip-and-snitch lines during COVID, and the perilous ease of calling someone out on social media, these suits suggest a disturbing level of passivity around one of the few behaviors that is universally condemned.

Yet no one seems to have reached the necessary threshold of concern, impatience, or anger to go directly to law enforcement.

No substitute for the criminal justice system

It takes a lot for me to defend either the “law” or “order” side of the criminal justice system.

The criminal justice system is far from perfect—some of the long lags in the Gardner case raise their own questions. But when you need to get a monster off the streets—and if Gardner did the things he is accused of, he is a monster—you need police with guns, courts with judges and juries, and prisons with walls. Not a 501(c)3 in Denver.

And you certainly can’t count on nor wait for mandatory reporters.

That brings me to the question that is sure to come up in the comments, as it does any time this topic is on the table.

The criminal justice system often requires victims to face their predators. Yes, that can be severely traumatic, deterring the formal reporting of sexual crimes.

It’s a tension, a friction, a sticking point, a hurdle, and maybe an obstacle that stands between a victim and justice - which means it shields a perpetrator from justice.

But it is a sine qua non, a necessary condition, an inescapable cause to achieve the desired effect of justice for both the victim and the perpetrator.

That’s reality. Call it harsh and unfair as you wish.

The Center and the entire safe guarding apparatus were designed to offer victims of sexual crimes an alternative to public reporting, identification, testimony, and cross-examination. The costs of that trade-off when everything works perfectly include insufficient punishment for the perpetrator; and limited, if not superficial, protection of others. When it doesn’t work perfectly, which is most of the time, sexual predators have free rein.

As a former federal criminal defense attorney told me: “We have bad actors, including pedophiles, in every pocket of society. Because it’s not specific to sport, we already have mechanisms for dealing with people and acts like that: the criminal justice system. It may not be perfect, it has its flaws, and it may not be satisfactory to those close to the victims in horrific situations like pedophilia. But it’s a system designed to provide due process.”

Due process that strengthens the outcome for every party: victim, criminal, and society.

The Center and the criminal justice system are complementary, in their way. When justice is the desired outcome, there’s no substitute for the criminal justice system. If something other than justice is at the heart of a complaint, the Center is purpose-built and highly experienced at providing a justice-free process and outcome.

Read the whole thing at The American Spectator.

Photo credit: Tom Matko / Flickr.