A health club in DuPage County failed to screen an employee who was accused last year of sexually abusing a young athlete and failed to react when alerted that the employee had a criminal conviction in the 1980s for attempted molestation, a lawsuit alleges.



The John Doe suit was filed Thursday in DuPage County court against Robert Theodore and Life Time Fitness. Theodore worked as a trainer at the Life Time Fitness center in Warrenville until he was arrested in September and charged with three counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse.



The criminal case alleges that Theodore, 60, of Woodridge, abused a young man he had been training. The inappropriate contact took place at the gym, the victim's home and at Theodore's house, according to DuPage prosecutors.



Theodore is free on bond while he awaits trial, though he has been ordered to have no contact with anyone younger than 18 as a condition of bond.



The civil suit says that when the fitness center hired Theodore in 2001, it failed to properly check his background, which included a sex offense conviction in Arizona in the mid 1980s. The suit says Life Time failed to act on a letter sent in 2003 that detailed the Arizona case.



"Along the line, there were a bunch of opportunities to find out this information," Brian Perkins, the attorney representing the young man and his family, said Thursday.



A spokesman for Life Time said the company had not seen the suit and would not comment on pending litigation. Jason Thunstrom said the company was "quite startled" to learn of Theodore's arrest last September and has continued to cooperate with the police investigation.



Theodore could not be reached for comment.



A representative for the county attorney's office in Pima County, Ariz., confirmed Theodore's 1986 conviction on a charge of attempted child molestation.



According to the lawsuit, the case involved an 11-year-old boy Theodore met through the Big Brothers program in Tucson, where he was working as a teacher and athletic director at a private school.



He served jail time and moved to the Chicago area in the early 1990s, the suit said, and he applied at Life Time in 2001, at a time when a routine state police background check would have revealed the Arizona conviction, the suit said.



In 2006, Theodore, while still employed at Life Time, began training the young man whose allegations led to Theodore's arrest last year, the suit said.