President Trump signed the bill into law on February 14, 2018. To read the entire law as passed by Congress, Google: S.534 – Protecting Young Victims from Sexual Abuse and Safe Sports Authorization Act of 2017.
The new federal legislation mandates certain protections for young athletes, especially in cases of sexual abuse accusations. A minor is defined as anyone under the age of 18.
Because of Nassar’s case, much of the language used in the law addresses “National Governing Bodies” (NGBs), such as USA Gymnastics, as well as Paralympic Sports and their member
The requirements within the Safe Sports Act apply to every youth-serving organization and privately-owned business in America.
Consequently, this new law instantly changes the requirements for every martial arts school in the United States. Whether your studio is a hobby, a part-time operation or a full-time professional business with staff/instructors, this law impacts you.
Further, even though the law uses the word sports: even if you’re not a sport-oriented school whose students participate in a competition, you are included. However, the requirements for a competition-oriented school? are more stringent.
Here’s a list of entities cited in the law that are required to comply We substituted the words “martial arts schools’ here where applicable for the sake of clarity:
- martial arts schools that participate in interstate or international amateur athletic competitions, and whose membership includes any adult who is in regular contact with an amateur athlete who is a minor.
- martial arts schools that do not participate In interstate or international amateur athletic competitions.
- churches
- camps
- leagues
- sports facilities
- tournament hosts
- teams
All aspects of the law are meant to prevent sexual abuse in youth sports, primarily through prevention training, prevention policies and mandatory reporting. According to the law, any act of suspected child abuse including sexual abuse must now be reported. Further, an individual who is required, but fails, to report suspected child sex abuse is subject to criminal penalties.
The Safe Sports Act really gets its teeth, so to speak by vastly expanding the mandatory reporting requirements on both the state and federal level to all types of youth sports organizations and businesses. A person who fails to report abuse can be punished according to the laws in their state and/or this new federal law. Many states treat a failure to report as a felony Our industry’s school owners and instructors teach children every day how to protect themselves from bullying, from potential kidnapping from low self-esteem. It is completely natural, then, to accept that we are also responsible for protecting them from predators within our own schools.
The First Step – What Category do You Come Under
- Level 1 – National Governing Body (NGB)
- Level 2 – Paralympic Sports Organization (PSO)
- Level 3 – Martial arts school participating in interstate or international competitions
- Level 4 – Martial arts school that does not participate in competitions
The categories, as presented above, are self-explanatory, if you’re a sports-oriented school and you and your students travel out of state to compete, you’re in Level 3. Here, the requirements are more stringent. The majority of U.S -based martial arts schools, however, are not competition-focused and thus fall into Level 4.
Level 4
Let’s start with Level 4 since the vast majority of American martial arts schools aren’t sports-oriented Of course, we realize there’s also a percentage of studios that are both competition-focused and conventional. Means, some of the school’s students compete and others do not
But to keep things simple here, Level 4 would embrace schools teaching empty-hand self-defense, fitness, stand-up and grappling arts, and any form of weapons
Level 4 studios are required to adhere to a new “standard of care.” a reasonable standard for all organizations providing youth sports programming or activities. Unfortunately, the new law does not provide a definition of a reasonable ‘standard of care *
Further, there have been no legal cases yet to truly lay Out what the courts find as a reasonable standard of care.
Stripping away the new law’s use of sport-oriented terminology. Level 4 is basically a “catch all.” It includes martial arts schools by citing “An amateur sports organization…. whose membership includes any adult who is in regular contact with an amateur athlete who is a minor.”
Some requirements for both Level 4 and Level 3 overlap, so well address them here in Level 4.
Prevention policies. All adults in your school that interact with any children are required to report suspicions of an abused child to law enforcement. Both volunteers and paid employees are mandated, reporters
Children are legally defined as any individual under the age of 18.
Talk about your class schedule. Do you have any family classes? Do your adult classes include teenagers? Does your schedule group students by rank instead of age and/or rank? In many studios, this means every adult student is now required to report suspicions to law enforcement
As stated above, your paid team members and volunteers have mandated reporters. A state like Florida, for example, may not make employees and volunteers mandated reporters, out the federal law does This means that 1» one of these individuals fails to report abuse suspicions, he/she is guilty of a felony and can face jail time.
Prevention training. The mandatory prevention training is quite specific to the new law. Martial arts schools “must offer and provide consistent training to all adult members who are in regular contact with amateur athletes [students] who are minors, and. subject to
Youth Oriented Interaction
According to the New Law, you must establish reasonable procedures to limit 0ne-on-one contact between a student who is a minor and an adult.
Study the Grooming Process Used by Predators
- Selection Process
- Winning Trust
- Seizing Opportunities
- Grooming the Child
- Acting out the abuse
- Threatening
Notification
- You must educate the staff (paid or not)
- Put a Poster Up
- Adding a paragraph to the Student Handbook
- Posting a Notice on your website
Awareness
You must make the minor students in your school aware of at least two individuals there to whom they can report any abuse concerns about an employee or volunteer. The reason for two individuals is because the person giving a student a ‘creepy’ feeling might be the designated person to whom they should report.
Level 3 – Competition Oriented Schools
Background Checks
If you travel to any tournaments and take under the age of 18 students, you must have background checks on all staff members that travel with you (that usually involves them getting fingerprinted).
You must provide annual training on prevention and education regarding this law.
Record Keeping
You must maintain records of everyone’s training. If you don’t record the policy, procedures, and compliance in writing, legally it never happened.
The Safe Sports Act also amends the federal criminal code to revise civil-remedy provisions for a victim of a federal sex offense. For one, it changes the civil statute of limitations to 10 years from the date the victim discovers the violation or injury, as opposed to 10 years from the date the cause of action arose. The bill also extends the statute of limitations for a minor victim to file a civil action to 10 years from the date such individual reaches age 18.
