USA TODAY International Edition
Cheer’s failures on abuse claims
Accused sex offenders allowed around kids
Seated in an interrogation room in a Washington state jail, Lenny Lewis Jr. spun an implausible tale about why he had downloaded child pornography onto his co- worker’s laptop. Lewis explained to Kent police that he was sick of working as a cheerleading coach. He wanted to be fired from the gym where he taught tumbling to young athletes – and to ensure he would never again work in the sport.
“There is no way,” Lewis said in 2010, “that I would be able to get a job after this in cheerleading.”
He was wrong. The criminal justice system did its part by convicting Lewis of attempted possession of child pornography and placing him on Washington’s sex offender registry. But Lewis kept coaching, slipping by a Kentucky gym owner who did not make him pass a background check. Then in 2016, Lewis used a fraudulent Social Security number to clear a screening for membership in the U. S. All Star Federation ( USASF), the na
tional governing body of competitive cheerleading.
He might still be coaching today if he hadn’t run into the gym owner who fired him for downloading child pornography.
Kim Kawachi said she was so alarmed to see her former employee still working in the sport that she picked up the phone in late 2017 and called USASF. When officials there told her Lewis had passed his background check, Kawachi said she drove to the courthouse, copied the records showing his conviction and sent them to USASF.
Months passed, Kawachi said. Lewis kept coaching.
“It was just like: ‘ How much more could I possibly give you? Why can’t you dig a little deeper on what’s going on? Or is this just another thing on your damn desk and you don’t want to deal with it?’ ” Kawachi said.
A USA TODAY investigation found that USASF has an inherently flawed process for investigating complaints – one with critical gaps that have repeatedly allowed adults accused or even convicted of sexual misconduct to remain around children. Sometimes USASF doesn’t even follow its own procedures, allowing complaints to stall midprocess or delaying action when their policies call for a person to be suspended or banned.
USASF has received hundreds of complaints against people accused of misconduct, such as bullying, financial impropriety and sexual abuse. Yet it has had no staff dedicated full- time to managing those cases, according to a former USASF contractor who said she and the organization’s membership director were the only ones handling that task from 2019 until she left this fall. Ginger Wilczak, the contractor, said she worked just a few hours a week as USASF’s SafeSport case manager – and even that was scaled back during the coronavirus pandemic in part because of financial constraints.
“If I made 10 hours a week, that was an extraordinary week,” she said.
Though experts say sexual misconduct accusations should be acted on immediately, USA TODAY found multiple examples in which USASF paused its process for law enforcement to investigate, taking no steps to warn the cheer community or public.
USA TODAY interviewed nearly two dozen people who expressed frustration with the way USASF handled their concerns, citing the organization’s drawnout process and lack of communication.
No action for more than a year
Washington gym owner Jeff Mendoza was not banned by USASF until more than a year after the organization received reports in 2018 that he was accused of sexual misconduct, according to records obtained by USA TODAY. Mendoza, who is awaiting trial on two felony counts of sexual exploitation of a minor after he was accused of coercing his athletes to pose for photographs nude and in their underwear, declined to comment. He has pleaded not guilty.
California coach Ryan Carter was reported to USASF and child protective services in late October after families said he had inappropriate contact with multiple female athletes, including slapping them on the butt and sending overly familiar, nonsexual messages, according to documents obtained by USA TODAY. Law enforcement opened an investigation, and Carter has since been fired for messaging athletes after being placed on leave, records provided by a gym official show.
But he has not been publicly suspended by USASF. The organization has suspended his membership only internally, the documents show. Carter called the allegations “very fabricated and untrue” and denied being fired or under investigation. Law enforcement did not respond to a request for comment on the status of its investigation.
Texas coach Jorge Martinez was reported to USASF in December 2018 by a gym owner who said he had beat up an athlete he was dating while they were at a cheer competition. Martinez did not respond to requests for comment. The gym owner said USASF waited nearly two years to launch an investigation – opening it less than a week after USA TODAY published an article in September about misconduct in cheerleading.
In that report, USA TODAY revealed USASF and USA Cheer, the umbrella organization for all aspects of cheerleading, had failed to ban nearly 180 people who faced charges relating to sexual misconduct of minors while affiliated with the sport. When the newspaper began its investigation, USASF had suspended or banned just 16 people. More than 130 others have since been added to that list.
USASF, which has jurisdiction over more than 2,300 clubs and thousands of athletes, was created in 2003 by Varsity, a for- profit company that dominates the sport. Varsity continues to hold a permanent majority of seats on USASF’s board of directors, and USASF’s president and vice president of events and corporate alliances are Varsity employees.
USASF President Jim Chadwick and Vice President of Membership Amy Clark declined requests to be interviewed for this article.
The organization requires its members to report all allegations of misconduct or abuse. In a statement, USASF said it has received 298 submissions to its online reporting form, more than 80% of which are not related to sexual abuse and maltreatment. It declined to say over what time period those reports were received, how many reports it has received by phone or email, or how many employees are dedicated to handling complaints. USASF also declined to comment on individual cases.
“We are careful to implement a process that is fair to the claimant and fair to the accused,” the organization said in a statement. “Every report we have received has been addressed or is in the intake and investigation process.”
USASF said it doesn’t begin its own disciplinary process until any law enforcement action has concluded because it doesn’t want to hinder the criminal investigation. It said it follows all mandatory reporting laws.
The organization said not all reports warrant placing a person on USASF’s public list of those suspended or banned. Instead, USASF said, “many times” it will remove a coach’s USASF eligibility as an internal measure while reviewing an allegation.
But that is an imperfect safeguard. Internally suspending an individual’s membership offers no warning to parents or the broader cheer community. And that measure only means that person cannot go backstage or in warm- up areas at USASF competitions – not that they can’t continue to coach.
Experts also raised concerns about USASF’s online reporting form, the organization’s primary mechanism for receiving complaints.
The gym owner who reported Martinez, Rebecca Rios, is familiar with USASF’s ineffective process. She said she has filed complaints about six people with USASF, none of which the organization quickly acted on. In response to one, a USASF official told Rios the organization was “reworking our whole system at the moment.”
“We’ve been trying to determine the best way to handle the huge number of reports coming in,” the official wrote in an email dated July 22, 2019.
Rios said she followed up with USASF multiple times after reporting Martinez in December 2018. She and her husband, Danny Rios, had fired him from their gym.
But he soon resurfaced at a gym nearby and continues to coach. The Rioses said they have received no update since USASF opened its investigation in September.
“There was just nothing done about it,” Danny Rios said. “It just makes you feel like, why are we doing all of this if this guy can go down the street and start coaching? It’s just extremely disappointing. It makes our sport look tragic.”
‘ Has to be something better’
On paper, USASF’s detailed process for investigating complaints includes reporting to law enforcement when needed, assigning an investigator and a review by a committee of independent experts.
Most of the people interviewed by USA TODAY didn’t get far into that process. They said they either received no response, a passing acknowledgement or a string of emails and calls that seemed to lead nowhere.
Three women who filed complaints with USASF in July 2019 about popular cheerleading photographer Andrew Escobedo told USA TODAY the organization brushed off their concerns.
The reports, which were obtained by USA TODAY, included varying allegations, including that Escobedo had stolen money from clients, mistreated employees and acted inappropriately toward female athletes. One of the women who filed a report, Dani DesLauriers, told USASF she was in contact with two dozen others with concerns and was willing to provide the organization with any information it needed to investigate.
USASF didn’t take her up on the offer – or even respond, she said. DesLauriers said she later learned that USASF said it could not investigate because Escobedo was not a USASF member.
But the governing body’s policies contradict themselves on that point. In its complaint resolution process, USASF said it has jurisdiction only over its members. Yet in its SafeSport policy manual, the organization said it has the “authority and jurisdiction” to investigate allegations against anyone employed by a USASF program, even if they are not a member.
Though not a member, Escobedo does have ties to USASF. He has photographed inside USASF gyms and at competitions sanctioned by the organization, including one in March.
Escobedo, in an interview with USA TODAY, acknowledged that he owes money to clients but denied the other allegations. “Absolutely none of that is true,” he said. “The refunds, absolutely, that’s something I can’t deny. I have to man up and face that.”
DesLauriers said she was embarrassed and felt she had failed the cheerleading community when USASF did not take the complaints about Escobedo seriously.
“It was a huge slap in the face to me. I worked so hard and put myself out there to be vulnerable to this,” she said. “And then USASF was like, we’re not going to bother.”
In July 2019, the same month that USASF received the complaints about Escobedo, a Texas woman raised concerns about a USASF member preying on underage girls, including her teenage daughter.
The woman, whom USA TODAY agreed not to name because her daughter is a minor alleging abuse, sent USASF a dozen screenshots of sexually explicit messages that she said Kale Dunlap had sent her daughter and others. She also provided details on two criminal cases Dunlap was facing at the time in Texas on charges of sexual assault and solicitation of a minor.
Under USASF’s policy, Dunlap should have been suspended that day. The organization says it will suspend the membership of anyone facing sexual misconduct charges, then make a final determination after the criminal case is resolved. But Dunlap wasn’t suspended.
Six months passed – as the mother repeatedly shared updates with USASF about Dunlap’s criminal cases – before the organization banned him after Dunlap’s conviction for online solicitation of a minor. Dunlap, who also has pleaded guilty to sexual assault charges in another case and is facing at least three more cases, declined through a jail official to be interviewed.
The Texas woman said she was frustrated with USASF’s process.
“There has to be something better in place,” she told USA TODAY.