Study – USTA can do more to prevent abuse, including sexual misconduct

An outside review of the U.S. Tennis Association’s safeguarding system offered 19 specific recommendations for how the group that oversees the sport in the country and runs the US Open Grand Slam tournament can do more to protect players from abuse such as sexual misconduct.

A 62-page report written by two lawyers — Mary Beth Hogan and David O’Neil of New York-based firm Debevoise & Plimpton — was presented to the USTA board of directors last week and made public Thursday.

“The USTA complies with all of the requirements of the U.S. Center for SafeSport, and in several respects has policies and procedures that are more protective than the Center’s requirements. … We did, however, identify several ways to increase player safety that the USTA should consider adopting,” Hogan and O’Neil wrote.

The report arrives less than two months after a tennis player was awarded $9 million in damages by a jury in federal court in Florida following her accusation that the USTA failed to protect her from a coach she said sexually abused her at one of its training centers when she was a teenager. O’Neil — former head of the Justice Department’s criminal division — and Hogan wrote that their “review did not encompass the investigations of specific incidents involving allegations of sexual misconduct apart from reviewing whether the USTA met its obligations when abuse was reported to the USTA” and so they “did not investigate the events leading to” that Florida case.

They also noted that the USTA was a defendant in four other lawsuits — one of which resulted in a settlement — related to sexual abuse of tennis players over the past two decades.

The lawyers said they conducted “a thorough independent review” of the USTA’s “current policies and procedures for preventing, reporting and responding to reports of abuse, including sexual misconduct.”

The review encompassed interviews with USTA employees and access to hundreds of the organization’s documents. It also included an assessment of safeguarding at 51 other national governing bodies for sports in the United States, Paralympic sports organizations and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee, along with the guidelines set forth by the U.S. Center for SafeSport.

The report says “the Board expressed its intention to incorporate” the suggestions into the USTA’s Safe Play program.

The 19 recommendations include:

• seven that “focus on preventing misconduct before it occurs;”

• nine related to…