PIAA drops ball conducting officials’ background checks

A published report says dozens with criminal records have been game officials.

PITTSBURGH (AP) — Dozens of people who officiated school sports events since 2005 have criminal records, and a self-reporting policy by the statewide association overseeing them doesn’t seem to be working, a newspaper found.

The Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association doesn’t conduct background checks. It didn’t even ask prospective officials about their criminal backgrounds before 2006, and since then has included only these two questions on its applications: “Have you ever been convicted of a felony? If so, what was the offense and when did it occur?”

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette said officials with the PIAA, citing personnel and privacy issues, refused to confirm the identities of some officials even after the newspaper found criminal records for people with identical names.

As a result, the paper said it cannot state exactly how many of the 2,272 officials who have worked in the Pittsburgh region since 2005 have criminal records. The paper said it numbered in the dozens.

Bradley R. Cashman, executive director of the PIAA, said its system was working. He said he was not aware of any PIAA sports official engaging in improper conduct with a student, except in cases were it was “incidental” to their role as a sports official.

Still, the newspaper found troubling cases, including Harold J. Stancliffe, 61, of Verona, who officiated an eighth-grade football game even after he was charged in 2005 with distributing 176 computer images of young boys having sex.

In the 10 years before Stancliffe was charged, he worked for about 40 schools in Pittsburgh’s eastern suburbs as a baseball, football and basketball official, according to the Westmoreland Basketball Officials Association.

His license to officiate games wasn’t suspended until a month after he was charged, and wasn’t revoked until nine months after he was sent to federal prison in 2007, the newspaper found.

Clint Helmick, who has a criminal record dating to a sexual battery conviction in 1983, had been licensed to officiate baseball and basketball since 1986.

Helmick, 44, of Canonsburg, is awaiting sentencing next month after pleading guilty in May for rubbing a coat hanger against the groin of a 5-year-old child in a clothing store in August 2007.

His officiating license was suspended a month after the charges were filed and was revoked in July.

Cashman was not available to comment on the newspaper’s report Monday.

A statement released by the PIAA Monday said fewer than one percent of registered officials in the Pittsburgh area had any criminal convictions and most were for misdemeanors and offenses that occurred 15 to 20 years ago.

Even more, the agency wrote, “there was no finding that any official, at any time, committed an offense relating to, or arising out of, his or her officiating duties.”

The newspaper said Cashman had responded to its findings, first reported Sunday, in writing.

“While there are undoubtedly some sports officials who are currently registered who have prior criminal convictions, our multi-tiered approach has, in its totality, seemed to work,” Cashman wrote.