U.S. District Judge Paul G. Byron, in his recent order, granted partial summary judgment, affirming that an internal USTA investigation verified Aranda’s “engagement in sexual misconduct” with McKenzie in 2018, when she was 19, and also revealed an incident involving the coach four years earlier. The USTA‘s own records documented 31 reports of sexual abuse within the sport between 2013 and 2018, indicating its awareness of the pervasive issue of sexual abuse among amateur athletes, as stated by Judge Byron.

The judge emphasized that since the USTA oversees both the training facility and coaches for athletes in its program, individuals like McKenzie depend on the organization to take reasonable measures to prevent instances of abuse during training sessions and events. McKenzie argued that the USTA shares a “special relationship” with its players, similar to the duty of care universities owe to their adult students, thus imposing an obligation to protect athletes in its training program from sexual assault — a claim the court supported.

McKenzie sought summary judgment solely on her negligence claim, leaving other allegations like battery and intentional infliction of emotional distress for trial. While the USTA pursued summary judgment on all counts, asserting its lack of awareness regarding Aranda’s history of misconduct, Judge Byron rejected their motion, deeming issues of breach and causation appropriate for jury determination.

According to the lawsuit, Aranda arranged practices on a secluded court without surveillance cameras and at times when few people were present, facilitating his assault on McKenzie.

McKenzie had been part of the USTA’s Player Development Program from age 12 to 19, with the assault occurring shortly after Aranda became her full-time coach in November 2018.

Judge Byron highlighted that the USTA did not prohibit relationships between athletes and staff until 2019, suggesting evidence of a culture of sexual misconduct within the training program.

Additionally, the woman involved in the prior incident was a USTA employee who failed to report the assault, even after being promoted to manager of player development. She only came forward following McKenzie’s incident, with the court deeming her inaction unreasonable.

McKenzie is represented by Amy L. Judkins of Newsome Melton PA, along with Robert Allard and Mark J. Boskovich of Cerri, Boskovich & Allard.

The case is McKenzie v. United States Tennis Association Inc. et al., case number 6:22-cv-00615, in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida.

In addition to the high-profile cases of abuse involving Bob Hewitt and Justin Gimelstob, there have been numerous other allegations of abuse within the sport. Some of these allegations involve coaches and other individuals in positions of authority who used their power to sexually exploit young athletes.

The US Tennis Association (USTA) has taken some steps to address incidents of abuse, including creating a Safe Play program to promote safe and respectful interactions among athletes, coaches, and other individuals involved in the sport. The organization has also implemented stronger background checks for coaches and officials, and has encouraged athletes and others to come forward with any concerns or allegations of abuse.

The law firm of Cerri, Boskovich & Allard has been at the forefront of holding the US Tennis Association accountable for failing to protect athletes.

However, survivors and advocates continue to call for more systemic changes to prevent future incidents of abuse within the sport. These changes could include increased training for coaches and other individuals who work with young athletes, the creation of independent oversight bodies to investigate and address allegations of abuse, and the establishment of more effective reporting mechanisms to encourage survivors to come forward with their stories.

Federal lawsuit filed by San Jose-based Cerri, Boskovich & Allard and Florida-based Normand PLLC

ORLANDO, Fla., March 29, 2022 – A rising tennis star who was sexually assaulted by her coach has filed suit against the United States Tennis Association, claiming the organization and its player development affiliate failed to protect her from a known sexual abuser.

The civil suit was filed in Orlando, Florida on behalf of Kylie McKenzie, an Arizona resident who was sexually harassed and assaulted in 2018 by Coach Anibal Aranda at one of USTA’s National Training Centers.

“The manner in which USTA enabled Aranda’s predatory behavior shows the USTA continues to have a serious sexual misconduct problem,” attorney Robert Allard said. “We are starting to see a distressing pattern of the USTA turning a blind eye to the sexual exploitation of athletes.”

Kylie was 19 and trying to come back from a serious injury when the then-34-year-old Aranda began coaching her at the direction of USTA. Like most abusers, Aranda used Kylie’s desire for success to exert power over her, promising that she would be successful if she stayed with him.

“Aranda had his hands all over me when we were practicing and his behavior was escalating on a daily basis,” Kylie said. “It got to the point where I dreaded going to practice.”

The turning point came on Nov. 9, 2018, when Aranda sexually assaulted Kylie by rubbing her vagina when he was sitting next to her on a bench after practice, the lawsuit says.

Kylie immediately reported Aranda to the United States Center for SafeSport. After an extensive investigation, SafeSport accepted all of Kylie’s allegations and ordered that a 2-year ban and subsequent 2-year probationary period be imposed against the coach.

Aranda’s harassment and abuse of Kylie, Allard said, should have been foreseen by the USTA since he had previously attacked a high-level USTA executive in virtually the same manner.

“USTA was acutely aware of this man’s predatory behavior and, incredulously, made the decision to assign him to Kylie for coaching, even though they knew they would have significant one-to-one interactions, often in remote parts of a massive training center,” Allard said. “If there was ever a situation of sending a wolf to an unprotected, unknowing and innocent sheep, this was it. The fact that they did not even warn her or her parents of his history is unconscionable.”

A recent story published by Matt Futterman and the New York Times contains additional information about Kylie’s story.

This is by no means the first time USTA has kept its athletes in the dark about its knowledge of predator coaches. As covered in extensive litigation that concluded in 2021, the USTA had previously been made aware of another coach’s molestation of a male athlete in Northern California and, although it subsequently banned him, kept this information confidential and failed to issue simple warnings to parents of children known to be under the care and supervision of this coach. As a result, at least one other boy was molested.

Compounding matters is the fact that for well over 10 years the United States Olympic Committee had been imploring the USTA to make several changes to its child protection rules, including publicly posting lists of banned coaches and banning romantic coach/athlete relationships. USTA consistently flouted these recommendations, insisting that it was fully able to regulate itself, as New York Times’s David Chen wrote in April 2020

“USTA’s track record demonstrates it is unable to protect its members so long as its leadership continues to be fixated on revenue generation at the expense of athlete protection,” Allard said. “So, we are asking Congress, as it recently did with USA Gymnastics, to get involved in the daily management of this corrupt entity and issue, where appropriate, severe sanctions such as decertification.”

Any athlete who was sexually harassed and/or abused by Aranda or any other USTA coach is encouraged to contact Cerri, Boskovich & Allard at 408-289-1417 or visit https://www.cbalawfirm.com/.

Sexual predator Normandie Burgos, a once well-respected Northern California tennis coach, is serving a 255-year prison sentence after being found guilty in May 2020 of 60 counts of child molestation.

Some of the charges involved Stevie Gould, who was a 13- year-old tennis player when Burgos began abusing him. The abuse went on for two years.

Stevie is largely responsible for putting Burgos in prison: he secretly recorded the tennis coach admitting to having sex with a child and turned the recording over to police.

Then, Stevie went one step further and filed a civil sexual abuse lawsuit against the United State Tennis Association for allowing Burgos to continue coaching long after the allegations of abuse first surfaced in 2001.

The Burgos Tennis Foundation was a USTA affiliate and Stevie’s lawsuit was settled in 2021.

Stevie described the experience as a “long, arduous process” that was also a “really honorable process.”

“There’s a lot of people who are focused on monetary gain and I didn’t feel that with attorney Bob Allard,” Stevie said. “I felt like their priority, in addition to vindicating me, was to take care of me and to get justice for what was right.”

At first, Stevie was skeptical about filing a civil suit but that feeling disappeared as he worked hand-in-hand with Mr. Allard and victim advocate Jancy Thompson.

“When I met Bob for the first time here in San Francisco, I was extremely hesitant. And then I started actually talking to him and listening to what he had to say. And there’s a genuine aspect to Bob and to Jancy and to the entire law firm that resonated with me,” Stevie said. “It’s a gut feeling. What can’t be understated is how important that is when you’re dealing with something so sensitive and so meaningful to you, and to the person who’s working with you.”

The lawsuit proved to be a true learning experience

“I learned many things about myself, which I didn’t know before. And that’s the most important part of the process – what you learn about who you are, what you stand for and what you want in this world,” he said. “It empowered me to feel like I can speak up even more than I already have to tell my story in the best way that I can, and to know that I can speak to people in all different situations in life and know that I have people behind me, people supporting me that really know how to work and know how to get things right.”

Stevie learned, too, that the sexual abuse he endured will always be a part of his life.

“It’s not something that’s ever finished, ended, accomplished. It’s not something you can defeat, shrug it off and move forward. It’s always going to be a part of you,” Stevie said. “And that’s what I would tell any survivor of sexual abuse that, for better or worse, it is a part of who you are. And the more you can learn to accept it as a part of who you are, and work to make things better to turn such a horrible experience into something that you can use to empower others and empower yourself, learn that you have gained a lot of strength, a lot of integrity through being abused and you understand how to have empathy for others. And instead of trying to escape it, embrace it and use it for the best way you can.”

Stevie believes if you talk about your abuse you create “new opportunities in life that you may not have had before. And that’s something that’s really key to understand.”

Another important lesson he learned is that “sexual abuse does not stop with the victim. I have seen it traumatize my family, my friends, people that I’m not very close to were really, really saddened and affected by this process.”

The lawsuit helped his family to help him

“I know that from my experience and from my family’s experience that they learned a lot about what I went through that they didn’t know before,” he said. “They learned about what happened and they learned about what I was going through day-to-day. They learned how to fight for me instead of giving me pity. And that was something that I couldn’t be more appreciative of – they were able to stand by me instead of feeling like they had to stand for me.”

Perhaps one of the biggest lessons Stevie learned is that he’s just as vulnerable as the next guy. But knowing and believing are sometimes hard to reconcile.

“Everyone is capable of being taken advantage of and it’s not your fault, no matter how much you might think it is,” he said. “That’s something that I will say but will struggle for years and years and years to believe. But doing this is a way to take control back, it’s a way to take your power back.”

Stevie will continue to talk publicly abuse his abuse because he wants to encourage other survivors to come forward. “It just takes one and one leads to one more. We can start a movement – no more sucking it up, taking it and not speaking up. We need to change that.”

According to the New York Times, with growing cases of sexual misconduct between sports coaches and athletes, the United States Olympic Committee reported, in September 2014, that all sports, except tennis, had taken the initiative to protect athletes from abusers. At the time, Gordon Smith, the tennis association’s executive director, and chief operating officer, “objected to a ‘single mandatory national entity’ overseeing abuse cases across federations.” Adding that “a sport should be able to ‘opt-out of the centralized structure’ if it could police itself.”

The problem with self-policing has shown, however, that many abusers fall through the cracks. Just a few months before this 2014 meeting, a U.S.T.A. tennis coach, Normandie Burgos, had been arrested for abusing one of his athletes. Unfortunately, it was not his first time facing criminal charges for sexual misconduct. Source: New York Times

Burgos was a former college tennis player, then a teacher and coach at Tamalpais High School. He became a well-liked and supported tennis coach. In 2006, he was arrested after students reported that he had touched them inappropriately.

Even during his court case, Burgos received a lot of support from the tennis students’ families. Despite one student testifying during the 2010 trial that “Burgos had put a sleeping mask over his head and eyes, before massaging him and touching his penis,” the case ended in a mistrial.

According to the New York Times, Burgos, “became emboldened, prosecutors now say.” Source: New York Times

Burgos did not stop preying upon young and vulnerable athletes for sex. He started the Burgos Tennis Foundation, a non-profit with funding from the U.S.T.A.

He marketed himself “as being ‘certified as a trainer at the highest levels’ by the United States Professional Tennis Association.” He used his foundation as a way to attract young and underprivileged athletes. He groomed his athlete victims by giving them free lessons, equipment, and clothes, which made these athletes indebted to him. The New York Times also reported that Burgos would drive his favorite players to his condominium complex in Richmond.

In 2014, Burgos faced more criminal charges when one of his players told police he had been abused for nearly two years. Initially, the victim was thrilled to be playing on a tennis team, with official U.S.T.A. links. He was also getting more one-on-one practice with Burgos. Court documents reveal that “Burgos demanded oral copulation and other sex acts. The victim notified the police and U.S.T.A., but without evidence, the police released Burgos.

The next victim was Stevie Gould, another rising tennis athlete with hopes of playing tennis in college. Gould was abused for two years, “including at hotels during U.S.T.A. tournaments in other states.” For Gould, he began to see a pattern of Burgos’s grooming practices, including being given gifts of free equipment, lessons, and clothes too. He watched Burgos grooming other vulnerable children and decided to speak up. He reported the abuse in 2017. With police guidance, Gould used a hidden wire to record a confession from Burgos, which led to his arrest. In August 2019, Burgos received 255 years in prison for 60 counts of child molestation.

The New York Times reports that there is no public record of any action taken against Burgos by the U.S.T.A. Despite being a convicted sex offender, he is also not listed in the database of the U.S. Center for SafeSport. Since the U.S.T.A. wanted to self-police, they are accountable for abusive coaches. The U.S.T.A. did nothing against Burgos, allowing him to continue to abuse children.

Since SafeSport relies on reporting from each federation, the lack of reporting and disciplinary action from the U.S.T.A. resulted in Burgos falling through the cracks. When the New York Times spoke to Laurie Kimbrel, the Tamalpais school superintendent who pushed to revoke Burgos’s credentials, she is quoted as saying, “that no one in the tennis establishment contacted the district to vet Burgos after the well-publicized 2010 trial.” Source: New York Times

When “W.S.” met Coach Normandie Burgos he was just seven years old, a young boy who was good at tennis and wanted to get better.

There’s no disputing that Burgos wanted W.S. to become a great tennis player – he repeatedly told W.S.’s parents that he was a “champion.” But as the years passed, W.S. grew up and Coach Burgos began to want more.

He wanted a sexual plaything.

W.S. is now 20 years old and is in counseling as a result of being abused. San Jose attorney Robert Allard recently filed a civil lawsuit on his behalf against the United States Tennis Association and its regional affiliate, USTA NorCal, for negligence. The suit alleges the tennis associations should have known Burgos was a sexual predator and did not perform adequate background checks that would have revealed Burgos’ notorious past as a child molester.

USTA is an elite organization that trains Olympic hopefuls. By conferring their membership privileges on Burgos, the USTA set the stage for him to molest his male student-players.

“Burgos’ history as a sexual predator goes back nearly 20 years, when allegations first surfaced that he was sexually abusing high school students,” attorney Robert Allard said.

Burgos in the San Francisco Bay Area

Burgos, 55, has a long history of sexual misconduct that can be traced to his days as a tennis coach and physical education teacher at Tamalpais High School in Marin County, Calif.

Tamalpais students lodged multiple sexual misconduct complaints against Burgos beginning in 2001. Charges included inappropriate touching during body composition tests, with at least one student alleging Burgos touched his genitals under the pretext of giving him a massage.

In 2006, Burgos was arrested and criminally charged with sexual battery after a young male tennis player reported being molested.

Burgos was fired from Tamalpais High School in 2008.

He denied the sexual misconduct allegations and finally went to trial in 2010. But the trial ended with a hung jury: eight jurors voted to convict, four voted to acquit.

“That acquittal left Burgos free to molest other young teens,” Allard said. “And he did.”

The Burgos Tennis Foundation

The highly-publicized trial did result in Burgos losing his California teaching credential, so he could no longer teach tennis at schools. Instead, he began giving private tennis lessons to youths under the auspices of the Burgos Tennis Foundation.

Coach Burgos Teaching Credential Revocation

It’s believed Burgos and his foundation were granted USTA and USTA NorCal membership in 2011.

“Membership in such as elite organization gave parents a false sense of security because they believed USTA was following its Safe Play policy,” Allard said. “The Safe Play guidelines specifically prohibit child abuse and sexual misconduct.”

But that didn’t stop Burgos, who began “grooming” W.S. in 2011 when he was just 12 years old, touching and massaging him inappropriately.

The sexual abuse started at 13, lasting about a year.

Then, W.S. told his mother about it.

The long road to justice

W.S.’s mother reported the abuse to USTA NorCal in 2014.

“I know my mom contacted multiple USTA NorCal tournament directors and asked them to ban Burgos from their events, but they wouldn’t do it,” W.S. said. “She asked for the ban because I was extremely uncomfortable around Burgos and his presence negatively affected my performance.”

W.S. went on to say the tournaments were important for college recruitment, ranking points and prize money.

In February 2017, police in Richmond, Calif. began investigating Burgos after receiving a tip that he had sex with a 14-year-old boy. Their investigation uncovered another victim and Burgos was charged with 60 counts of child molestation.

Both boys testified against Burgos. One of the most dramatic moments came when prosecutors played a surreptitiously-recorded video of Burgos admitting to sex acts with one of the boys.

Burgos was convicted and is now serving a 255-year sentence in state prison. He, too, is named in the civil lawsuit that seeks unspecified damages from USTA and USTA NorCal.

“I’m suing because they need to make sure their Safe Play rules are enforced,” W.S. said. “This can’t be allowed to happen again.”

Contact Us

If you are a victim of sexual abuse, the law in California provides you with a three-year window, until the end of 2022, to seek legal action. For a confidential and free consultation, please call our sexual abuse legal team at Cerri, Boskovich & Allard at 408-289-1417.