Reach for screening gold: unify safeguarding in sport

Events like the Rio 2016 Olympics take a serious amount of organisation. To help with this, volunteers, employees and participants are drafted in to ensure the smooth running of events. For the Rio games, it was estimated that there would be 8,000 employees, 85,000 third party employees and 45,000 volunteers working for the Olympic Committee Rio 2016. Volunteers have come from all over the world to support the games in order to keep athletes and supporters safe.  This is where screening and safeguarding in sport comes into place but unfortunately, negative press has come to light around individuals who have criminal records but have made it to the games. At CBS, we believe that there should be a unified approach to screening for high profile events such as this and a process should be mandatory.

We would expect coaches for any sport who appear at the Olympics to go through vigorous checks to ensure that they can legally work in this environment. However, a recent case has highlighted a gymnastic coach who managed to slip through the net in the USA. Vincent Pozzuoli coached in Connecticut and was arrested in 1994 and later convicted of battery for groping and 11-year-old boy at a gymnastic camp in Maine. However, he continued coaching and in 2011, he was convicted once again for groping another young gymnast, clearly indicating that he is a repeat offender. Yet, he was not added to the banned coaches list until this year, 20 years after his first conviction. This is an appalling example of how dangerous coaches have still been allowed to operate as the banned list for gymnastics in the USA isn’t at the level that it should be. It also begs the question, what other coaches have slipped through the system and are possibly attending the Olympics this year?DBS

However, it’s not only coaches that should be screened before entering the games, athletes should be also. During the current games, Moroccan boxer Hassan Saada was arrested by Brazilian police on suspicion of raping two female workers at the Olympic village. He’s not the only boxer who has faced problems during the games too. Namibian Jonas Junius has been accused of sexually assaulting a housekeeper. Incidents like this cannot be allowed to happen and those volunteering or participating in the Olympics should be allowed to feel safe, especially as athletes are getting increasingly younger requiring official bodies to be more careful than ever.

It’s imperative that anyone working, volunteering or competing at these events go through a detailed background screening process in order to safeguard all involved. Volunteers alone come from 151 countries, with participants coming from 207 countries, all with very different backgrounds and records.  It would be expected that these volunteers are checked thoroughly before the games to a very high standard to help identify any possible threats.

Events such as the Olympics which involve countries from around the globe need to be unified in their approach to background screening to ensure that every person present is screened at the same standard. We simply cannot have some countries upholding high standards whilst others let potentially dangerous individuals slip through the cracks. If you would like to discuss any background screening enquiries, you can contact a member of our team by calling us on: 0144 799 900 or email us at: info@cbscreening.co.uk