Editor’s Note: This story contains details of sexual abuse.

More than three decades after Conrad Mainwaring allegedly abused young athletes and prospective students, Syracuse University implemented its first comprehensive policy for protecting minors.

A review of the university’s policies illuminates critical gaps that experts on sexual abuse prevention and response said can make it difficult for employees to best protect young people. The strongest policies, they said, are accessible, direct and thorough in addressing the unique needs of the organizations they are designed for — areas where SU’s otherwise sturdy policies sometimes falter.

“Based on the reality of the prevalence of sexual harassment, assault and abuse, there is a great likelihood that it will somehow impact your institution and the people that you serve,” said Laura Palumbo, the communications director at the National Sexual Violence Resource Center. “Part of where transparency starts is having policies that are very outright and accessible to the members of your community.”

Prior to 2019, policies addressing sexual misconduct and interactions with minors at SU were scattered. A review of archived policies and administrative records turned up numerous SU pamphlets on sexual harassment and memos to faculty and staff about misconduct, but few enumerated policies governing the conduct of volunteers and employees.

The Safety of Minors and Abuse Reporting Policy which SU implemented in 2019, was meant to change that. The policy codified existing practices related to youth programs and supplements conduct codes and sexual abuse prevention policies, a university spokesperson said in a statement. It mandates background checks and training for all employees and volunteers who might interact with minors and requires that programs serving minors be registered with the university.

But the policy doesn’t address complaints or allegations that haven’t resulted in an arrest, leaving opportunities for experienced abusers to gain access to young people without detection.

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“A lot of people escape the attention of human resources departments because we’re not asking the right questions on the application,” said Camille Cooper, the vice president of public policy at the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network.

Abusers are often able to avoid detection by institutions where they have access to young people because they have never been arrested for their crimes, Cooper said. Criminal background checks, by their nature, won’t turn up investigations or allegations of misconduct that never resulted in an arrest or that were handled by institutions internally, she said.

SU’s policies require volunteers and employees who interact with minors to undergo background checks which include criminal history record checks at the state and federal level, sex offender registry checks and child protective services checks at the state level.

An SU spokesperson didn’t respond to questions about whether the university conducts any additional checks that would turn up concerning behavior that didn’t result in an arrest.

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The spokesperson also didn’t respond to questions about the disclosure of alleged and proven misconduct by employees or volunteers to those people’s future employers — a common oversight survivors said allowed Mainwaring to abuse young people across two continents for nearly 40 years.

“Sometimes what ends up happening, particularly in educational institutions, whether it’s K-12 or whether it’s higher ed, you might have someone who has previous allegations at other places they’ve worked, and there might have been an administrative hearing or something and then they move on,” Cooper said. “Institutions of education across the board need to do a better job of screening applicants for previous possible red flags.”

SU said, in a public statement and in court, that it first became aware of allegations involving Mainwaring in February 2019. Survivors suing the university allege officials knew of the abuse in the 1980s and failed to act — a claim SU’s lawyers say lacks evidence.

Experts on abuse prevention and reporting also point to accessibility as a crucial element of effective policies. Strong policies are easy to read and clear in communicating the chain of command, they said.

SU’s policies carve out exceptions that defer the protection of minors to various entities on campus and beyond. Each entity has its own set of policies and procedures, some of which proved challenging to find.

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The Office of Institutional Risk Management oversees the university’s overarching minors protection policy. A university spokesperson was unsure when the office began operating at SU but said it “has been for many years providing guidance and oversight of university programs involving minors.”

Recruited athlete visits and university tours — two ways that Mainwaring lured young people to campus ahead of abusing them — are subject to separate procedures. Employees at the Office of Institutional Risk Management did not respond to emails requesting clarification about these exceptions, the procedures that govern them or where those procedures can be located. In a phone call, the office’s interim director said it would not answer The Daily Orange’s questions about the policy or its exceptions.

Prospective students who participate in official tours by the Office of Admissions are accompanied by a parent, guardian or other adult chaperone, said Sarah Scalese, senior associate vice president for university communications, in a statement to The D.O.

Recruited athlete visits, while listed as an exception to the overall policy, are governed by the National Collegiate Athletic Association and university rules, she said. Prospective student athletes who stay overnight at the university are subject to a pre-approval process, and a parent or guardian must consent to their child staying overnight. Student athletes who host prospective student athletes must also be pre-approved, receive training about supervising minors and opt in to a background check, she said.

Phone calls to the Office of Athletic Compliance, which oversees university compliance with NCAA policies, and emails to its director went unanswered.

Donald Palmer, a professor at the University of California, Davis Graduate School of Management, said institutions should be careful not to implement so many policies that they become difficult to follow. Palmer studies child sexual abuse in youth-serving organizations and was part of a team that created a user-friendly interface for organizations looking to develop child-safe policies.

“The more rules and regulations you write, the more complicated it becomes to follow them,” Palmer said. “It often happens that people stop following certain procedures.”

SU’s policies require all university employees, including anyone participating in programs or activities involving minors on campus or sponsored by the university, to report suspected child abuse — a requirement multiple experts applauded. They also said the university made the right decision by immediately contacting police when alerted in February 2019 to allegations of abuse by Mainwaring dating back to the 1980s.

“You really want to get it out of the hands of the institution because it’s always going to have an inherent interest in minimizing the severity of the disclosure,” Palmer said.

The lag in reporting of abuse is one of the key challenges in assessing the effectiveness of university policies meant to shield young people from abuse. Since some abuse isn’t uncovered for decades after it occurs, it can be hard to say whether policies in place now are working, Palmer said.

Cooper, whose work with RAINN has included securing funding for sexual violence programming and addressing campus sexual violence, said organizations with youth in their care need to understand the realities of how abusers operate to best protect their members.

“It’s important for everyone to understand that offenders are very sophisticated deceivers, and they are exceptionally good at leading double lives,” Cooper said. “Any organization, whether it’s an educational organization or the Boy Scouts or a church, you have to be very careful about who you allow into those positions.”

Published on December 5, 2021 at 11:34 pm

Contact Michael: msessa@syr.edu | @MichaelSessa3