![]() ![]() (The Times did not examine private-school coaches because their school files are not public.) In fact, the Times found 29 coaches who were passed on to new school districts after being disciplined, pushed out or fired for sexual misconduct.Īs a profession, coaching has among the highest rates of sexual-misconduct complaints, experts say. The Times' investigation found that school administrators often conduct cursory inquiries of sexual-misconduct complaints against coaches and rarely alert police to complaints of sexual abuse despite a Washington law that says they must do so within 48 hours.Įven when school officials find wrongdoing, they often bow to pressure from the teachers union, handing out mild punishments or none at all.ĭistricts routinely keep investigations secret by failing to document them or by signing agreements with accused coaches promising not to tell. "They wait for the crisis and scramble to decide how to deal with it." "I'll be honest, most schools don't follow a code of ethics for their coaches," said Tim Flannery, assistant director of the National Federation of State High School Associations. As with Deming, at least 98 of them continued coaching or teaching afterward. In a yearlong investigation, The Seattle Times found that 159 Washington coaches have been reprimanded or fired in the past decade because of sexual misconduct. "I even wrote a letter to the Mount Adams School Board," said Gorski, "but never got a reply." Gorski had tried to warn people about Deming, the 1990 Class A Washington state coach of the year. As one of the most successful coaches in the state, he had a résumé that seemed to shield him from two decades of sexual-misconduct complaints. Randy Deming was acquitted in May on two charges of fourth-degree assault.īut the Mount Adams district, in Yakima County, seemed less interested in court records and more in Deming's wrestling record. When Gorski learned Deming would also be teaching girls, he warned: "You're putting him back into the fire." Gorski also knew of Deming's reputation as a groper of girls who had even been charged with child molestation. Gorski, a football and golf coach in Whatcom County, knew Deming for years as a rival coach at nearby Blaine High School. "Tell me you didn't hire Randy Deming," he pleaded. When a friend told coach Stu Gorski in 1995 that Mount Adams School District had hired "a phenomenal wrestling coach," Gorski froze. Other cases of WA coaches and sexual misconduct Misconduct often goes unpunished by districts ![]()
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