Yuyun Lusiyani
A sweeping investigation by ProPublica and The Washington Post has revealed that the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU), one of the nation’s largest youth sports organizations, is systematically failing to protect the hundreds of thousands of children in its care from sexual abuse. The joint probe found that the AAU has repeatedly misled the public about its prevention measures, suppressed allegations of sexual misconduct, and largely reneged on promises of comprehensive safety reforms made over a decade ago. This alleged institutional negligence has created a perilous environment for young athletes, turning the organization into a refuge for coaches previously disciplined or banned by other youth sports bodies.
The AAU’s immense footprint in American youth sports is undeniable. With an estimated 760,000 athletes and coaches registered nationwide, it hosts competitions in dozens of sports across the country. Annually, hundreds of thousands of children participate in its elite events, including a staggering 100,000 at the world’s largest volleyball championship in Orlando, Florida, 8,000 at its iconic basketball championships at Disney World, and over 15,000 at the Junior Olympics in Iowa. To the legions of parents whose children don the distinctive red, white, and blue AAU badge, the organization ostensibly offers more than just a competitive platform; it promises a secure environment where coaches are vetted, monitored, and trained, where strict rules govern adult-child interactions, and where abuse allegations are handled effectively. The investigation, however, found this trust to be profoundly misplaced.
A Decade of Broken Promises and Deceptive Practices
The current crisis traces back to a pivotal moment in the AAU’s history. In 2011, a sex abuse scandal involving its then-CEO, Bobby Dodd, and young basketball players thrust the organization into an uncomfortable spotlight. Dodd, credited with transforming the AAU into a youth sports behemoth by the 1990s, had previously faced scrutiny. A 2004 Seattle Times investigation revealed dozens of individuals with felony convictions, including a convicted murderer, coaching AAU-sanctioned teams in Washington and Idaho. While Dodd then pledged to consider background checks for the AAU’s 65,000 coaches, these were not fully implemented by the time ESPN reported allegations of Dodd molesting youths in the 1980s. Dodd, who denied the claims, stepped down, receiving a $1.5 million payout.
In the wake of this scandal, under new president Louis Stout, the AAU publicly committed to a “new culture in which the overarching priority” was athlete protection. In June 2012, it vowed to implement "historic child protection measures," including mandatory background checks, comprehensive child sex abuse prevention training for all adults, policies to prevent adults from being alone with children, and a strict rule to bar anyone prohibited from participating in other youth-serving organizations. These reforms, if fully enacted, would have positioned the AAU at the forefront of youth sports safety.
However, the investigation reveals a stark contrast between these pronouncements and reality. ProPublica and The Post found that the majority of these sweeping reforms were never fully implemented, or were implemented in a severely compromised fashion. For instance, the AAU claimed to offer child abuse prevention training, even calling it "mandatory" on its parents’ webpage, yet the investigation found it did not actually offer such training nor verify if coaches took the sports psychology-focused course it did provide. Jason Sacks, CEO of the Positive Coaching Alliance (PCA), whose "Double Goal Coach" seminar was repurposed by the AAU, stated that their material "was not an official training by any stretch" for abuse prevention and "are not currently built to satisfy the Safe Sport Act requirements." The links to the few resources that were offered are now broken. This institutional misrepresentation has left countless children vulnerable.
A Haven for the Disgraced: Escaping Accountability
Perhaps one of the most alarming findings is the AAU’s emergent reputation as a sanctuary for coaches banned or suspended by other youth sports organizations. Despite its 2012 pledge to bar such individuals, the AAU never adopted this rule into its written policies. Current and former executives from six national sports governing bodies, along with other key stakeholders, attest that the AAU has become known as a place where coaches can escape discipline and operate outside strict safety laws.
The investigation identified at least eight coaches who continued to work with children under the AAU in the last five years after being banned or suspended by other youth sports organizations. This includes three elite gymnastics coaches disciplined by USA Gymnastics or SafeSport for emotional and physical abuse, a fencing club owner facing sexual misconduct allegations, and a Georgia basketball coach suspended by SafeSport for undisclosed reasons who still took his team to AAU nationals. A regional governing body official recounted being told by the AAU, when warning them about a coach evading a SafeSport suspension, that "SafeSport does not apply."
This phenomenon highlights a significant regulatory loophole. When Congress passed the Safe Sport Act in 2018, it created the U.S. Center for SafeSport to investigate sexual abuse allegations within the 50 national sports governing bodies (NGBs) overseen by the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee. SafeSport established strict new rules, mandatory annual training, and a public disciplinary list. However, because the AAU operates as an independent entity and is not an NGB, it falls outside SafeSport’s direct jurisdiction. While the 2018 law did require all sports groups, including the AAU, to "offer and provide consistent training…regarding prevention and reporting of child abuse," only Congress, not SafeSport, can enforce this provision. The AAU, therefore, is not legally bound to follow SafeSport’s disciplinary list, rules, or training mandates, and reportedly conducts its own investigations, often dismissing SafeSport’s findings.
Internal Failures: A Board Without Guiding Principles
The AAU’s internal processes for handling serious allegations of sexual misconduct are equally troubling. The investigation scrutinizes the organization’s Board of Review, a small group of four elected AAU members and a non-publicly named chair, which operates without formal training in law, investigation, or child sexual abuse. A former member who served on the board for nearly 25 years candidly admitted that decisions on banning coaches were simply "decided on our feelings."
The case of Ashlee Orndorff exemplifies these systemic flaws. In January 2018, Orndorff, a former teenage basketball prodigy, publicly accused Matt Williams, then the AAU’s second vice president and a paid employee, of grooming and sexually abusing her starting at age 15. Williams was a highly influential figure, having founded the prominent Jam On It basketball brand, a significant revenue generator for the AAU through its enormous tournaments.
Orndorff’s allegations went before the Board of Review a month later. Transcripts reveal a contentious hearing resembling a criminal trial, where Williams had legal representation, but Orndorff did not. While Williams denied sexual abuse as a minor, he admitted to fathering Orndorff’s child when she was 19 and he was over 30, a year after coaching her—a clear violation of the AAU’s 2012 policy against sexual relationships with former players, a rule the board member later claimed did not exist at the time of their review.
Crucially, the board did not interview any witnesses or consider a separate 2005 accusation of sexual abuse against Williams by a different player, despite the board chair having personally responded to those earlier allegations. Orndorff had provided a detailed 34-page narrative with potential witnesses, ten of whom later corroborated aspects of her story in depositions for a 2019 lawsuit. Yet, within six months, the Board of Review cleared Williams of wrongdoing, citing a lack of evidence and questioning Orndorff’s credibility due to a history of drug use and perceived discrepancies in her story. He was reinstated to his $84,000 AAU officer position and continued coaching.
Jim Fox, a youth basketball executive who later joined the AAU Board of Directors, vehemently disagreed with the outcome, believing the "old boys’ network" had orchestrated a cover-up to avoid "embarrassment." Fox’s subsequent attempts in 2022 to revisit Williams’s case, citing new evidence from Orndorff’s civil suit, were refused by the board. Williams was only stripped of his membership in late 2022, shortly after a new president, Jo Mirza, was elected. Williams died from cancer the following year, and Orndorff settled her civil case in 2023.
Silencing Victims: Arbitration and Secrecy
The AAU also employs legal tactics to keep sexual abuse claims out of public scrutiny. Its registration forms include clauses requiring all claims against the organization to be resolved through confidential arbitration hearings, rather than open court jury trials. The AAU has consistently used these agreements to quash lawsuits, arguing that victims signed away their right to sue upon registering. This practice, lawyers and sports groups note, is exceptionally rare in sex abuse cases involving other major youth sports organizations and was largely banned by a Biden-era law in 2022.
Despite the 2022 law, ProPublica and The Post found that the AAU attempted to force sex abuse claims into arbitration as recently as 2024, in a lawsuit filed by a Florida teenager alleging abuse by her AAU volleyball coach. The case was settled out of court last year.
This strategy allowed the AAU to escape scrutiny even in high-profile cases. Greg Stephen, co-director of the influential Barnstormers Basketball club in Iowa, was convicted in 2018 of sexually exploiting over 400 young players and sentenced to 180 years in prison. Yet, arbitration clauses prevented his victims from suing the AAU, despite initial arguments that the organization was partly responsible for failing to enforce its 2012 safety policies, including a ban on coaches sharing bedrooms with players. A judge sided with the AAU, shielding the wealthier parent organization from claims in court. The Barnstormers’ AAU-provided insurance limited sexual abuse payouts to $1 million, equating to a mere few thousand dollars for each victim. Guy Cook, the families’ lawyer, described the AAU’s tactics as "sophisticated," drawing parallels to the Catholic Church’s historical efforts to suppress child sex abuse lawsuits.
Growth Over Safety: A Financial Imperative
The investigation suggests that the AAU’s dramatic financial growth in recent years has coincided with, and perhaps been enabled by, its lax approach to safety. From 2015, the nonprofit consistently spent more than its $20 million annual revenue. However, by 2021, its revenue surged to $24 million, climbing to $34 million two years later. In 2024, the latest year for which tax returns are public, the AAU reported nearly $44 million in revenue and approximately $30 million in cash and investment reserves—triple its 2019 holdings.
This growth is attributed not just to basketball, but to expansion across various sports, including boys’ volleyball, martial arts, gymnastics, and flag football. The AAU’s competitive advantage often lies in its cheaper and easier team registrations. For example, in swimming, some large clubs migrated to the AAU, where they could register less serious swimmers for $20, significantly less than USA Swimming’s $70+ cost. This contributed to a nearly 5% decline in USA Swimming registrations in 2023. A key selling point for switching to the AAU, as noted on one swimming website, was the absence of "mandatory training hoops," highlighting how the lack of stringent safety requirements serves as a competitive draw.
The Human Cost: Ongoing Vulnerability
The ongoing repercussions of the AAU’s policies are deeply personal for victims like Aleesa Bravata. In 2025, Bravata reported to SafeSport that Elias Perez, her former volleyball coach in Southern California, had groomed and inappropriately touched her in high school. Within weeks, SafeSport issued a temporary suspension against Perez, a measure reserved for serious and recent allegations.
However, Bravata soon saw Perez’s truck in a local gym parking lot; he was still coaching. Balboa Bay, Perez’s club, was affiliated with both USA Volleyball (bound by SafeSport) and the AAU (not bound). While Balboa Bay eventually stopped Perez from coaching girls on its USA Volleyball teams, it permitted him to coach teenage boys on its AAU-affiliated teams for several months. Only after ProPublica and The Post contacted the club director, Travis Turner, did he decide to fire Perez, admitting he hadn’t initially understood the severity of SafeSport suspensions. In April 2024, SafeSport issued a permanent ban against Perez for sexual misconduct. Yet, Bravata fears that with the AAU’s current policies, nothing prevents Perez from simply finding another AAU club and another opportunity to coach children.
Calls for Accountability and Future Outlook
The scope of the consequences for young athletes nationwide remains impossible to quantify due to the AAU’s unusual secrecy for a nonprofit serving children. The organization consistently declined to answer questions from ProPublica and The Post for over a year regarding coach training, abuse claim investigations, policy enforcement, or background checks. In a brief statement, the AAU claimed commitment to athlete protection through "comprehensive protection policies overseen by our Compliance Department," citing verified identity checks, mandatory background screenings, and concussion protocols. However, the investigation noted that after inquiries about mandatory training, the AAU quietly changed its website to state the training was merely "encouraged."
Former Florida state Senator Lauren Book, a child sex abuse survivor and prevention advocate who served on the AAU’s 2011 reform task force, has since lost faith in the organization. "It should scare parents," Book stated, adding, "What AAU does is protect institution over children. They have never done the right thing when it comes to child protection."
The comprehensive investigation paints a damning picture of an organization that, despite its vast reach and crucial role in youth development, has prioritized expansion and financial gain over the fundamental safety of its young athletes. The regulatory gap that allows the AAU to operate outside the purview of SafeSport and its stringent rules demands urgent attention. Without external oversight or a dramatic internal shift, the Amateur Athletic Union risks continuing to perpetuate a cycle of broken promises, secrecy, and profound vulnerability for the hundreds of thousands of children who dream of competing under its banner.
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