Camp workers' backgrounds never checked
Staff not screened
By Chuck Plunkett and David Migoya Denver Post Staff Writers
State auditors on Monday released a scathing analysis of the summer football camps for youngsters run by the University of Colorado's former head coach, and of such loose accounting and oversight that auditors couldn't even tell whether any laws were broken or which rules were slighted. Also, auditors discovered that staffers who worked with the 8- through 18-year-olds were never screened for criminal histories until last summer. And then, most were missed.
The lack of criminal-background checks for workers at the camps came to light as officials wrested control of the camps from Barnett.
A new CU policy mandated that the checks be done. In its checks, the school found one camp staffer with a felony DUI conviction and another with a court restraining order against him.
When auditors screened an additional 18 employees, they found four with misdemeanor convictions including child abuse, assault, driving while impaired and false imprisonment.
"This is disturbing from just a personal mom perspective," said Colorado House Majority Leader Alice Madden, whose boys have attended the camp. "It's a pretty big breach of trust. I would have thought this would have been sort of a common- sense, absolutely-has-to-happen (procedure)." Colorado law since the mid-1990s has required that state criminal-background checks be conducted on state residents who work at summer camps. However, it is unclear whether sports-related camps fall under that rule, a Department of Human Services spokeswoman said late Monday.
Schoolteachers, commercial day-care staff, foster parents, social workers and residential treatment-facility workers submit to background checks, said Peg Long, executive director of the Colorado Association of Family and Children's Agencies Inc.
In years past, when administered by High Hopes '95, the camps were run without criminal-background checks, the audit found.
CU officials adopted a policy before last summer's camps to screen new employees.
Because the new policy came into effect so late in the process, there wasn't enough time to screen all the new employees and volunteers, said the university's controller, Mary Catherine Gaisbauer.
The result was that only 23 of the 88 new employees were screened, the audit found.
University counsel said the university's Police Department conducted the checks through the state's criminal database.
Auditors said in their report that national background checks were used. That language appears to be in error.
Gaisbauer said the university is considering adding a check of the child-abuse database before next summer's camp.
