A trust betrayed.

Byline: SUSAN PALMER The Register-Guard

BY OUTWARD APPEARANCES, they were the good guys - the Cub Scout leader, the youth counselor, the juvenile detention center worker, the Hult Center usher, the Kidsports T-ball coach.

They were working with kids, trusted by parents.

But the Scout leader is in jail, charged with molesting nine boys. The counselor has been indicted on charges that he traded in child pornography. The detention staff member faces charges of molesting four girls in county custody.

The usher has pleaded guilty to charges of fondling two young students on school outings, and the coach was relieved of his responsibilities after his status as a registered sex offender became common knowledge.

All in the first five months of the year in Eugene and Springfield.

It's the sort of Catch-22 that keeps parents awake at night.

"Any program that attracts children runs the risk of attracting people who prey on children," said Zane Wilson, a Scouting leader and pastor of the Springfield Lutheran Church. Steven Freeman, the jailed Scout leader, attended services there.

Every day, thousands of adults work with children in day care, schools, city youth programs, private clubs and church groups. Kidsports alone pairs 4,000 volunteer coaches with close to 20,000 children throughout the year.

The vast majority of them pose no threat to kids, but most organizations can't take any chances.

They use a standard tool: a criminal history background check for new hires and volunteers to weed out known sex offenders and others convicted of serious crimes.

But those familiar with criminal history databases say the checks may give parents and nonprofit agencies a false sense of security.

The fact is, no single clearinghouse of national records lists every crime committed by every individual.

Some records databases don't include misdemeanor crimes. Others include misdemeanors in Oregon, but only spotty records from other states. Some searches are based on fingerprint records, while others rely on names, which can easily be changed.

"There is no magic bullet," said Linda Stern, who oversees background checks for child-care applicants at the state Employment Department.

And the background checks don't come cheap.

The cost creates challenges for state-funded agencies, but hits nonprofit programs the hardest. So organizations such as the Boy Scouts and Kidsports limit their background searches to Oregon records to control costs.

What's still more unnerving: The most thorough check won't protect kids from predators with no previous arrests or convictions.

"Unfortunately, these guys don't come with a neon sign flashing," Wilson said.

Child abuse experts say that background checks represent a single weapon in the arsenal against predators. Also needed are program guidelines governing how children and adults interact, educated parents who can recognize abusive situations and knowledgeable children who are willing to tell when they've been victims.

Scrutiny up close

Most people presume that authorities can tap into a centralized database of crime information revealing every arrest or criminal conviction in someone's past, but that's simply not the case, Oregon State Police Lt. Cliff Daimler said.

Daimler heads the agency's Identification Services office, which conducts criminal background checks for publicly funded organizations, such as school districts, child-care centers and social service agencies that work with children.

Among those they want to keep away from kids: the 8,000 registered sex offenders statewide. That number includes 800-plus registered sex offenders in Lane County.

The 80 staff members at Daimler's office use fingerprints to check the backgrounds of about 6,000 people a month, about 67,000 people last year. They search Oregon records, which include all crimes committed in the state, and the FBI's National Crime Information Center database, the most complete repository of criminal history information available.

Law enforcement agencies across the country are required to report every felony and all sex and drug crimes to the FBI for inclusion in that database, Daimler said.

But about 40 percent of crimes committed nationwide are less serious misdemeanors and those aren't reported to the FBI, Daimler said.

So, for example, a string of minor assaults committed in Oregon would turn up in a statewide records check, but those same crimes committed in another state wouldn't necessarily show up in the FBI's records, Daimler said.

Until January, only law enforcement agencies and public entities such as schools and licensed day-care providers had access to the FBI's records.

Sports organizations and children's clubs seeking criminal records had to turn to private firms, such as Portland's OPEN Online.

OPEN Online buys public records from state agencies all over the country and then sells access to them. Its Oregon and Washington court records include most civil and criminal cases. But the firm's national database is far from complete.

There are holes in the system

Among the cases you won't find in the OPEN Online record: the January arrest of Looking Glass Youth & Family Services counselor Bill Wolf, charged with trying to induce a child to engage in illegal sexual conduct and delivering child pornography interstate.

Wolf was arrested after in a multi-agency sting operation that originated in New York City, and the case is moving through a federal court there. Wolf is accused of corresponding with agents posing online as adolescent girls, but faces no local charges so there is no Oregon criminal case against him. The only record of his arrest is in the FBI database.

But OPEN Online doesn't have access to the FBI records. While it can get its clients into Oregon and Washington's court databases, it only has corrections records for about half the states in the nation, and New York isn't one of them.

That's typical of the nation's for-profit information brokers, said Glenn Jacobs, president of OPEN Online. Companies such as his can't obtain records from every state because of the differences in privacy laws and also because not all states have put their court records into a centralized database, he said.

"It's not a perfect system," Jacobs said. "There are holes."

The only other way to learn about Wolf would be to go to the federal court in New York City and check the records there. OPEN Online provides runners who will do that, but costs for that service can mount quickly. And to go looking in New York, you'd have to already know about the case.

Someone checking Wolf's record might mistakenly assume that since he'd lived in Eugene for the past 17 years, a check of Oregon's records would be sufficient.

What OPEN Online does offer is speedy access. Clients can check records instantly at the firm's Web site and get a brief description of any charges against an individual, trial status, sentence and post-prison supervision.

But another potential drawback is that OPEN Online's search is name-based, making it easier for someone to hide the past with a name change, police note.

Time and money

Oregon State Police do their search based on fingerprints - a more thorough benchmark, Daimler said.

But it usually takes longer: Police can turn a state records request around in six days to two weeks, but it has taken as long as six weeks to get national information back from the FBI, according to people who use the system. New computer equipment has solved that lag time problem, state police say.

And now, prompted by national child protection laws designed to help private organizations do background checks, the state police are offering their access to FBI records to groups caring for children, elderly people and other dependent adults.

To help ease the cost burden, the Legislature waived the fees for groups who either mentor or tutor children, the elderly and those with disabilities for at least nine months of the year, but neither Kidsports nor the Boy Scouts fall into that category.

For them and groups like them, the state charges $36 for a records check for employee applicants and $30 for prospective volunteers. That doesn't include the cost of being fingerprinted - which ranges from $5 to $10 depending on the law enforcement agency doing the fingerprints.

That's less than the $75 fee one local private investigator charges to do a background check, but more than many nonprofits on shoestring budgets say they can afford.

For Kidsports, which checks the backgrounds of about 1,000 prospective volunteers every year, the state's fees represent a potential $30,000 price tag.

"That's a staff person and a half," Kidsports CEO John Crane said. The sports organization, which operates on about $1.7 million yearly, currently budgets $6,000 a year for background checks.

It uses OPEN Online, where the initial access fee is $3, with additional fees of $4 for each record that is opened and a $1.50 per minute charge to browse the state's online court records, according to OPEN Online's Web site.

Kidsports hires a private detective to do the OPEN Online background checks. He supports the nonprofit by giving them a cut rate to do the research, Crane said.

School districts and many state agencies routinely pass the cost of background checks on to prospective hires and volunteers, but Kidsports scrambles to keep enough coaches on its roster each year and doesn't have that luxury, Crane said.

"We've looked at doing it, but it's not realistic for us right now," he said.

Some discretion

When organizations discover an applicant with a criminal history, in-house guidelines help them decide what to do about it.

Oregon state regulations spell out which crimes disqualify teachers, child-care workers, child welfare case workers and others from employment.

For licensed day-care providers, for example, the list of crimes includes murder, manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide, assault, kidnapping, all sex crimes and any crimes against children.

Most private clubs and nonprofit groups have created similar policies. Some, such as the reading mentorship program Start Making a Reader Today, absolutely bar any convicted felons from volunteering in their programs, but some groups want leeway allowing them to give reformed and willing volunteers the opportunity to participate.

The Boy Scouts divides crimes into two categories. Scout leader applicants with criminal histories that fall into serious Category 1 offenses - all sex crimes, any offenses involving a child or dependent adult, any crimes involving a weapon and any illegal drug crimes - are automatically disqualified, local Scouting spokesman Mike Marchese said.

For less serious crimes, applicants get close scrutiny, Marchese said.

"We'll take out a magnifying glass and look at them," he said. Often that means a phone call to the law enforcement agency familiar with the crime. Good letters of recommendation and a current public service record will outweigh minor crimes committed more than 10 years ago, Marchese said.

Kidsports also pulled out a magnifying glass when Daniel Leon Hill wanted to coach his son's T-ball team last year.

The group began doing background checks in 1997 to make sure that its thousands of volunteer coaches had no prior arrests or convictions marking them as either dangerous or unsuitable role models.

Normally, convictions for sex and drug offenses and violent crimes disqualify an applicant from coaching for Kidsports, but Hill initially seemed to be the kind of person who deserved a second chance, said Dave Clark, one of Kidsports' four program directors.

Hill alerted Kidsports to his criminal history when he first applied to coach his son's T-ball team a year ago. He gave no details then, Clark said, just let Kidsports know that the background check wouldn't come back clean.

The record revealed a second-degree rape conviction in 1991, and Kidsports launched its standard review, Clark said.

Criminal history uncovered by the private detective goes to CEO Crane, who asks one of the program directors to interview the applicant and learn more about the circumstances of the crime.

The program director isn't given any information about the nature of the offense, Clark said. He gets the details from the applicant, then compares notes with Crane. If the volunteer has been honest about the crime, if it's minor, occurred in the past and the person has stayed out of trouble, Kidsports is inclined to give a coaching thumbs up, Clark said.

"I've got a couple of really good coaches working with kids who got in trouble when they were young," Clark said. Their offenses were bar fights and car theft, and the way Hill described his crime, it seemed to fall into that category.

One case's problems

OPEN Online's records show that in 1991, Hill was indicted on second-degree rape charges, that he was convicted on one charge and that the other charge was dismissed. He served time for the crime in 1991 and 1992, and had no other brushes with the law after that.

Clark sat down with Hill and asked him for more information, and Hill seemed to be forthcoming. He described a consensual relationship with an underage girl that occurred when he was 18 years old. Because of her youth, Hill was charged with second-degree rape, he told Clark.

He also said the girl was 16, that he had later married her, that they'd had two children together before divorcing and that he had custody of his children, Clark recalled.

Hill gave Clark his parole officer's name and Clark called the parole officer, who told him that Hill posed no threat to the kindergarten and first-grade boys he'd be coaching.

They let Hill coach, stipulating only that he not give any children rides to or from games, a practice the sporting program normally discourages anyway. "It was a judgment call," Clark said, and it appeared sound. Hill was a good coach, he said.

"I went out to his practices, and he was good with the kids," Clark said. "There were no complaints against him from the parents."

But what Hill had told Kidsports about his past was only partially true. He left out important details, available only by pulling Hill's file at the county courthouse.

First, Hill wasn't 18 when he committed the crime, but 19, and the victim wasn't 16, she was 13. He served 30 days in jail for that incident and was on probation with a mandate that he avoid contact with underage girls. Then he got involved with the 16-year-old girl. His probation was revoked, and he served 13 months in jail. When he got out of jail, he continued the relationship with the older girl, eventually marrying her.

Second-degree rape is a felony that lands a person on the state's sex offender's list. Ten months after the T-ball season was over, during a period when Hill wasn't coaching, someone circulated anonymous fliers with his picture indicating that he was a registered offender. One went to Kidsports.

Keeping children safe

When news stories reported the other details of Hill's crime, Kidsports cut him from the coaching roster.

Kidsports also began scrutinizing its files and found a part-time employee with a 12-year-old theft conviction in another state and fired him. Since then, the program has reviewed its volunteer vetting process and made some changes.

The sports organization now requires volunteers to fill out the same application form it uses for employees. In addition to checking the backgrounds of all new volunteer coaches, Kidsports is also checking the backgrounds of longtime coaches who have been working with children since before the background checks were instituted in 1997.

Kidsports also will do random checks every year on backgrounds of current coaches, to make sure the agency doesn't miss information about new offenses.

"It's my decision to put him out there," Clark said of the Kidsports coaches he assigns. "If something was to happen, it's my fault. Can I live with that?"

FIRST OF TWO PARTS

TODAY: Criminal background checks are expensive and may not reveal a person's true history.

SUNDAY: Prevention experts say children are no match for the manipulative predators who prey upon them. What parents can do to help their kids.

CAPTION(S):

Pastor Zane Wilson, a Scouting leader and a former police officer, saw no warning signs before an acquaintance, Steven Freeman, was arrested and charged with sexually assaulting nine boys.