Help Us Investigate Abusive Coaches in Youth Sports

Photo illustration by Lisa Larson-Walker/ProPublica. Photos by Sarah Blesener for ProPublica. For more than a year now, I’ve been investigating how youth sports organizations have failed to protect kids from sexual abuse, and the gaps in the system that have allowed coaches banned for misconduct to keep working with young athletes. So far, I’ve shown that one major nonprofit sports organization, the Amateur Athletic Union, has become a haven for coaches accused of abuse. I identified eight coaches who are still working with kids under the AAU despite having been banned by SafeSport, a center created by Congress to protect kids from abuse in sports that has a public list anyone can check .