By Danny Moran and Brad Schmidt

Two months ago, as the Oregon State University baseball team marched toward the No. 1 overall seed in the NCAA tournament, compiling one of the best records in college baseball history, a crime surfaced from a star player's past.

A Benton County sheriff's sergeant, on a sweep to track down sex offenders who let their registrations lapse, located one at Gill Coliseum, the heart of Oregon State's bucolic campus. It was Luke Heimlich, the ace left-hander who statistically is the nation's best pitcher and is among the top prospects in next week's Major League Baseball draft.

As a teenager, Heimlich pleaded guilty to a single charge of sexually molesting a 6-year-old female family member. Heimlich registered as a sex offender in Benton County after arriving at Oregon State. When he was cited in April for missing an annual update, it put the case in Oregon court records for the first time.

OSU's top pitcher was 15 years old when the crime occurred in his family's home in Puyallup, Washington, according to court documents obtained last week by The Oregonian/OregonLive through a public records request. Juvenile court records in Washington, unlike in Oregon, are not automatically confidential.

It's not clear whether Heimlich disclosed his August 2012 conviction to Oregon State prior to joining the team in 2014. Washington classified Heimlich as a low-risk sex offender.

Heimlich, 21, did not respond to several requests for comment. Baseball coach Pat Casey declined to comment. Scott Barnes, Oregon State's athletic director, would not specifically address Heimlich's case, citing student privacy laws. Nor would Barnes, who assumed his role in February, say when the athletic department learned that Heimlich was a registered sex offender.

At a time when colleges have been accused of going easy on top athletes for on-campus misconduct, Heimlich's story spotlights how Oregon State and other schools treat athletes who have committed felonies as juveniles. The NCAA sets no national policy. As a result, college programs with an incentive to win games are left setting standards about whether convicted felons can play.

Oregon State does not have a policy barring student-athletes with prior felony convictions from competition, Barnes said. And the athletic department, like the university at large, does not ask student-athletes to disclose criminal convictions during the admissions process.

Barnes consequently said he does not know how many Oregon State student-athletes have prior felony convictions, if any, beyond Heimlich.

"If we are made aware of an issue, we will mitigate it," Barnes said. "We will understand the severity of it, whether it's a safety concern or not, and we will deal with it."

Oregon State does learn when a student is a registered sex offender, according to university spokesman Steve Clark. Oregon State Police send the university a list of registered sex offenders in Benton County "on a regular ongoing basis," Clark said. The university then cross-checks those names with its student database to verify sex offenders who have enrolled.

The state police would not say how often the agency provides such lists to the university.

Assuming that process worked, then university officials would have learned about Heimlich's sex-offender status sometime after his arrival on campus in fall 2014, before his rise to stardom.

University procedures call for sharing the information with officials from human resources, the Office of Student Life and the campus police. The human resources department notifies the student and requests an interview.

Clark initially said the university has no formal policy requiring that the information be shared with anyone in the athletic department, including a player's own head coach. Decisions are made on the basis of "educational need to know," Clark said. The university's written procedures call for the Office of Student Life to find out if an offender is a student-athlete, although university officials say they treat all students the same.

But on Thursday, after a version of this story was published online, Clark provided new information. Under university practice, he said, the athletics department is supposed to be notified when a student-athlete is a registered sex offender. Citing student privacy rules, Clark would not say whether that happened.

The victim's mother said she doesn't understand why Heimlich has been allowed to play baseball at Oregon State. The Oregonian/OregonLive does not name the victims of sexual abuse and is not naming the girl's mother to protect the identity of the child, now 11 years old.

"I'm appalled that the college he's going to would even have him on their team," she said.

Heimlich has helped make Oregon State the favorite to win its first national title since 2007. Oregon State on Sunday reached the NCAA super regionals, improving to 52-4 and putting the Beavers two wins away from entering the College World Series.

Both Barnes and Clark defended Oregon State's admissions policy allowing convicted felons to enroll and play college sports. Clark pointed to the U.S. Department of Education's efforts to make higher education more accessible to all people, which prompted a 2016 directive urging universities to narrowly target the questions they ask applicants about criminal backgrounds. But Clark also said that Oregon State's practices haven't changed since at least 2011.

Officials acknowledged the possibility they will revisit the policy in the future.

"Anything we can do to improve, we will continue to seize upon, we'll continue to look at," Barnes said.

The conviction

Heimlich's felony conviction stems from an incident prosecuted by Pierce County beginning in March 2012. The young victim had reported Heimlich's abuse to her mother, and the father later contacted authorities, according to a probable cause document filed by prosecutors.

The girl told investigators that inside Heimlich's bedroom, he pulled down her underwear and "touched her on both the inside and outside of the spot she uses to go to the bathroom," according to court records.

"She said that she told him to stop, but he wouldn't," the documents state, and that "it hurt" when he touched her.

Prosecutors initially charged Heimlich with two counts of molestation for incidents between September 2009 and September 2010, and between September 2011 to December 2011. In Washington, child molestation in the first degree is a Class A felony.

"She said that the first time the respondent touched her she was four years old and that she was six years old the last time he did this," according to court records.

Heimlich ultimately pleaded guilty to one count of molestation between February 2011 and December 2011, a period in which he was 15. Prosecutors dismissed the other charge as part of a plea bargain.

The guilty plea eliminated any need for "further interviews of the victim or her testimony at trial," prosecutors wrote. Heimlich acknowledged guilt in his own handwriting.

"I admit that I had sexual contact" with the girl, Heimlich wrote.

Research shows that the vast majority of juveniles convicted of sex crimes do not reoffend in subsequent years.

After about three years, the likelihood of reoffending is "very small," said psychologist Michael Caldwell, who lectures at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

At five years, the recidivism rate for another sex crime hovers at 2.75 percent, according to a study that Caldwell published in 2016. That's because juvenile sex offenders tend to mature and respond well to intervention, Caldwell said.

"It's referred to as a redemption threshold, the point at which the person is no more at risk than any other individual walking around on the street," he said.

Heimlich entered a diversion program, received two years of probation and was ordered to attend sex offender treatment for two years, according to court records. He was sentenced to 40 weeks of detention at Washington's Juvenile Rehabilitation authority. But that sentence was suspended and he served no time, according to court records, because he successfully completed probation.

Heimlich was ordered to register as a Level 1 sex offender in Washington beginning Aug. 27, 2012. Washington characterizes Level 1 offenders as having "the lowest possible risk to the community and their likelihood to re-offend is considered minimal."

Heimlich finished probation and the court-ordered classes in September 2014, about the same time he moved to Corvallis to join Oregon State's baseball team.

Oregon law requires juveniles who were convicted of a sex crime in another state to register as a sex offender if the crime is a felony in Oregon. Clatsop County District Attorney Josh Marquis said that would be true in Heimlich's case, considering the statute under which he pleaded guilty in Washington.

Oregon lawmakers created the registry in 1989. Its purpose, the law says, is "to assist law enforcement agencies in preventing future sex offenses." They added the requirement for juvenile convictions in other states in 1997. The information is available to police but is not generally shared with the public unless someone calls Oregon State Police to ask.

It's not clear when Heimlich registered as a sex offender in Oregon. A spokesman for the Oregon State Police declined to answer specific questions about Heimlich, saying state law is ambiguous about what can be publicly disclosed. The agency would say only that his sex-offender registration is now current and that he is not in Level 3, a category considered to have the highest risk of reoffending.

Heimlich did register with Oregon authorities at some point in the past. The Benton County Sheriff's operation that snared Heimlich on April 3 was targeting offenders who previously had registered, but had failed to provide updates as required by state law.

Authorities found Heimlich at 2:20 p.m. on Oregon State's campus and cited him. Heimlich told authorities he had notified them whenever he changed addresses during his years in Corvallis, said Capt. Don Rogers of the Benton County Sheriff's Office.

Nonetheless, Heimlich was handed a criminal citation because he didn't report to authorities within 10 days of his most recent birthday. The Benton County District Attorney's Office dismissed the charge on May 17.

"Follow-up investigation reveals insufficient evidence of Defendant's knowledge of Oregon reporting requirements," Amie Matusko, a senior deputy district attorney, wrote in the dismissal.

Lack of standards

University President Ed Ray has taken tough public stances in the past on prior conduct of athletes. He pushed the Pac-12 to ban athletic transfers for students with serious misconduct issues in 2015, a year after Brenda Tracy made headlines talking about a 1998 sexual assault involving Beavers football players. The conference later adopted a version of Ray's proposed new policy.

Clark, the Oregon State spokesman, said the university has learned from Tracy's legacy, instituting sexual-violence prevention efforts that are tops on the West Coast, if not the nation.

But Oregon State remains far more lenient than some schools it competes with when it comes to identifying and allowing convicted felons to participate in sports.

The NCAA has no policy barring convicted felons from intercollegiate play. The association defers to athletic conferences and schools to make the call. The Pac-12 Conference, in turn, defers to its members in Oregon, Washington, California, Arizona, Utah and Colorado.

The University of Oregon used to have an unwritten policy prohibiting convicted felons from playing sports. The issue came to light in 2003 when the athletic director blocked a football player from joining the Ducks. A judge subsequently reduced the player's felony conviction to a misdemeanor, allowing him to play.

Oregon no longer practices that policy. But since 2015, all students who apply to Oregon, including athletes, have been asked to disclose convictions during the admissions process. Athletic officials use the information to make decisions about athletic participation on a case-by-case basis, according to an athletic department spokesman.

At Indiana University, which twice lost to Oregon State's baseball team this year, officials adopted a new policy in April banning student-athletes convicted of a felony involving "sexual violence." Indiana officials also must review the criminal background of every prospective student-athlete.

At the University of Utah, which plays in the Pac-12 with Oregon State, officials say they prohibit some felons from playing. The athletic director "will not allow known felons to be admitted out of high school," said Liz Abel, an athletic department spokeswoman, in an email. "This has been and continues to be our practice."

And at Fresno State University, which will play Oregon State in football in 2022 and 2024, athletic officials prohibit the recruitment and signing of felons, according to a written policy. That extends to juveniles convicted of crimes that are felonies in adult court.

Exceptions can be made under Fresno State's policy, but only with written approval from the athletic director and the university president.

"It is assumed that exceptions will be rare and only granted with overwhelming evidence supporting the making of an exception," the policy reads. Any coach who obtains the exception "assumes a heightened degree of responsibility" to ensure the athlete meets character, academic and athletic standards.

Heimlich's rise

Oregon State is on the verge of a return to the College World Series thanks in large part to Heimlich, who arguably has pitched the greatest season of any player in Beavers history.

On Saturday, Heimlich threw one of his best games. He improved his win-loss record to 11-1 with a 0.76 earned run average, a stunning rise after going 9-9 with a 3.56 ERA over his first two seasons. He has 128 strikeouts and 22 walks in 118 1/3 innings this year.

The seventh of eight children, Heimlich was homeschooled until his sophomore year of high school, when he transferred to Puyallup High School as a fully enrolled student.

As a high school junior in spring 2014, he led the varsity team to a 4A state title. The team went undefeated and Heimlich was named Gatorade Washington Baseball Player of the Year. That award recognized not only his athletic excellence and good grades but also "exemplary character demonstrated on and off the field."

Heimlich took NCAA-certified classes in summer 2014 to graduate early and joined Oregon State before the 2015 season, but he didn't reach his full athletic potential until his junior year.

"You got to find a way to reach that level, and I think it was difficult for me to make that adjustment at first because I had so much success in high school," Heimlich said in a May 10 interview with The Oregonian/OregonLive before the newsroom learned of his past crime. "But once it clicked for me, then I started pushing other people, not just on the field but in the weight room. And that's when it really changed."

Baseball America rates Heimlich as the 43rd best prospect in the MLB draft, which starts Monday.

The victim's mother said she does not keep tabs on Heimlich but knows he's one of the top players in the United States. She said her daughter was young enough that "she doesn't really remember everything that happened," but nonetheless has been ostracized from family events because most members of the Heimlich family have sided with Luke.

"He got two years of counseling and classes," she said. "My daughter's life has been changed for the rest of her life."

-- Danny Moran and Brad Schmidt

Researcher Lynne Palombo assisted with this report.