A Tennis Coach Was Abusing Minors. Should the Sport’s Federation Have Known?
The police arranged a second meeting, during which Burgos confirmed the crimes to Gould while being recorded. As Gould drove away, tailed by Burgos, police officers surrounded the coach and arrested him.
Burgos was sentenced in August 2019 to 255 years in prison, despite letters from tennis parents and others asking for leniency. One longtime high school coach, calling the program “a refuge for many players,” credited Burgos with instilling “discipline, resiliency and toughness in those students.”
Michael Coffino, a lawyer for Burgos, said, “There were significant legal errors in the trial that are on appeal right now, so I can’t comment further at this time.”
What confounds Laurie Kimbrel, the Tamalpais schools superintendent who pushed to revoke Burgos’s credentials, is that no one in the tennis establishment contacted the district to vet Burgos after the well-publicized 2010 trial.
“You can literally Google someone’s name and teaching certificate, and find out it was a permanent revocation,” said Kimbrel, now a professor of education at the University of West Georgia. “There’s no bigger red flag than that.”
Another red flag was Burgos’s foundation. He never registered the charity, and the state’s Franchise Tax Board suspended the foundation in 2013 for failing to file any tax returns.
After inquiries from The New York Times in February, Xavier Becerra, the California attorney general, demanded that the foundation cease doing business and fined it $9,000 for a slew of violations. Becerra also ordered the preservation of all communications with donors and other records — a possible prelude to charges.
Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/04/sports/tennis/tennis-sex-abuse-safesport.html