Stop Youth
Sexual Abuse
Youth sports create extraordinary opportunities for children — and, without proper safeguards, extraordinary vulnerability. The same trust, authority, and access that make coaches transformative also make the sports environment one of the highest-risk settings for child sexual abuse.
This wing exists because awareness, education, and clear reporting protocols save children. Every adult in youth sports has a role to play — and from Coach Winn's platform, every adult should act as a mandated reporter, regardless of what the law in their state requires.
"I have always been a mandated reporter. Certain states have certain laws — but from my platform, I believe everyone should be a mandated reporter, and we should strive for that. If you see something, say something. A child's safety is never someone else's responsibility."
The Scope of the Problem
These numbers are not abstractions. They represent children in your program, on your team, in your community. Understanding the scale is the first step toward prevention.
The sports context matters: Research consistently shows that the trust, authority, and access inherent in the coach-athlete relationship create elevated risk. Abusers in sports exploit the same qualities — dedication, obedience, physical contact — that make coaching effective.
Resources Built for Your Role
Prevention requires everyone to act. Each role in youth sports carries specific responsibilities — and specific tools to fulfill them.
Grooming warning signs, boundary protocols, mandatory reporting obligations, and SafeSport MAAPP compliance — everything you need to create a safe environment.
How to talk to your child about body safety, warning signs of grooming, what to do if your child discloses abuse, and how to evaluate a program's safety culture.
Your rights as an athlete, what safe coaching looks like vs. inappropriate behavior, how to recognize grooming, and how to report without fear.
Erin's Law compliance checklists, mandatory reporting law breakdowns by state, SafeSport policy templates, background check requirements, and institutional liability frameworks.
Understanding the Grooming Process
Grooming is a deliberate, calculated process — not a single event. Understanding its stages is the most powerful prevention tool available to every adult in youth sports.
Target Selection
Abusers identify children who appear isolated, have low self-esteem, or lack strong parental supervision — often the most eager-to-please athletes.
Trust Building
Special attention, gifts, extra coaching time, and emotional support that appears as mentorship. This stage can last weeks, months, or years.
Isolation
Creating situations where the child is alone with the abuser — private practices, car rides, hotel rooms, or 'special' training sessions.
Desensitization
Gradually introducing physical contact that starts as appropriate and slowly crosses boundaries — often framed as 'normal' coaching or athletic training.
Maintaining Control
Using the child's trust, fear, shame, or threats to prevent disclosure. The abuser often tells the child no one will believe them.
Abuse
The culmination of the grooming process. By this stage, the child is often deeply confused about what is happening and why.
Critical insight: Grooming often looks like exceptional mentorship. The abuser is frequently the coach, volunteer, or staff member who is most beloved by athletes and parents. This is not coincidence — it is strategy. The trust they build is the tool they use.
Beyond the Legal Minimum
State laws define who is legally required to report. Coach Winn's platform calls for something higher: a culture where every adult in youth sports treats themselves as a mandated reporter — because children deserve that standard.
What the Law Requires
All 50 states have mandatory reporting laws. In most states, coaches, teachers, and youth sports staff are explicitly named as mandatory reporters. Failure to report is a criminal offense in every state.
What Coach Winn Calls For
Regardless of your state's specific list of mandatory reporters, every adult who works with children in a sports context should operate as if they are legally required to report. The standard should be universal, not jurisdictional.
How to Get There
Annual training, clear reporting protocols, a culture where speaking up is expected and protected — these are the institutional conditions that make universal reporting the norm, not the exception.
If a Child Is in Danger Right Now
These hotlines are free, confidential, and available 24/7.