Justin A. Hinkley

Lansing State Journal

LANSING -The Listening Ear, a Lansing nonprofit that runs a crisis hotline for victims of sexual assault and others, does not run background checks on its volunteers and at one point used three volunteers who are convicted sex offenders, one of whom served in a leadership role.

The men are not part of the organization's team that works with sexual assault victims, said Jamie Tomlinson, the group's sexual assault advocacy coordinator. They are not currently taking calls, she said. Citing confidentiality rules, she would not provide any additional information about them. Listening Ear board members did not know the men were registered sex offenders until a few weeks ago, she said.

But people with lead roles at the all-volunteer organization were aware the men were registered sex offenders and did not share it with the board, a former board chairwoman and former volunteer -- both of whom resigned over the issue last month -- said late Wednesday. They said the men sometimes worked alone at the organization where walk-ins may come seeking help and that the men volunteered alongside at least one survivor of sexual assault.

"Those walk-in clients could be minors and those walk-ins could be sex assault victims," said Andrew Dombrowski, who formerly volunteered as development coordinator. He said late Wednesday that he stumbled across the men's histories on Google last month.

He and Alexandra Mitchell, a sex assault survivor and former chairwoman of the Listening Ear board, said they felt their concerns were downplayed when they brought them to the organization's leaders.

"We just kept getting backlash from the leadership group," Dombrowski said.

Tomlinson, however, said the pair resigned before they could see the work the organization was putting into it. Leaders have been discussing the issue in several meetings for weeks, she said.

"Their voices and their concerns were very heard," she said. "We wouldn't be having this conversation if it wasn't heard."

Dombrowski shared with the State Journal an email sent to Listening Ear staff on May 12, after he and Mitchell resigned. In it, organization leaders tell volunteers that "the concerns raised were about behaviors that happened years and decades ago. If a staff member takes a risk to disclose something personal about their past we support them and their self disclosure and respect the risk they took."

The issue could affect the 47-year-old organization's operations. Michigan State University has stopped referring individuals to the Listening Ear because it does not do background checks on its volunteers, university spokesman Jason Cody said in a statement. And Mitchell and Dambrowski said other partner organizations in the community are raising concerns.

Board members and staffers at the all-volunteer nonprofit met into the night Wednesday to discuss implementation of background checks and whether sex offenders should be allowed to volunteer, Tomlinson said. She said changes were proposed at that meeting and would be debated again on Sunday, but she wouldn't provide specifics until after Sunday's meeting.

"My main passion is for helping sexual assault victims," Tomlinson said. "We're doing everything we can to do the best we can for our sexual assault victims."

The registered offenders are Michael Coscarelli, 55, who was the Listening Ear's center coordinator, the public face of the organization; Cleveland Bafford, 57; and Jonathan Case, 33. All three men live in Lansing.

According to the sex offender registry, Coscarelli was convicted in 1995 of two counts of second-degree criminal sexual conduct, including a sex assault charge involving a person younger than 13. Bafford was convicted in 1984 of one count of first-degree criminal sexual conduct. Case was convicted in 2010 of one count of second-degree criminal sexual conduct involving personal injury.

Mitchell, who worked at the organization from April 2014 until last month and became board chair in July 2015, said she worked at least one shift with Bafford and didn't know he was a registered sex offender.

After Dombrowski shared the information with her last month, "I was appalled," she said.

Mitchell said Bafford has worked at the center since February, while Coscarelli and Case worked there at least a year.

Coscarelli and Bafford list the Listening Ear as places they volunteer on the registry. Case does not.

Coscarelli and Bafford are both Tier 3 offenders, the most serious level of those required to report to the registry, and must report to the registry for life. Case is a Tier 2 offender, and must report for 25 years.

Reached by phone late Wednesday, Case said he worked on the Listening Ear's suicide hotline, but wouldn't say how long he had worked there. He said he told the organization that he was a registered sex offender.

He said he wanted to work at the organization because he wants to help people.

Phone numbers for the other two men were not immediately available. No one answered at Bafford's home address. A person was visible through the front window at Coscarelli's home, but that person ignored repeated knocking by a reporter.

Coscarelli's LinkedIn page says he has worked at the Listening Ear since January of this year and that he is a center coordinator, chief administrative officer, crisis counselor and trainer. Information on the other two men wasn't immediately available.

The Listening Ear was formed in 1969 and provides crisis counseling to victims of depression, grief and sexual assault, according to its website. Volunteers take more than 1,000 calls to the 24-hour crisis hotline per month, the website says, and they also serve walk-ins. They have 67 volunteers Tomlinson said.

Crisis volunteers must apply to the group and those who are accepted must go through orientation and a 65-hour training program, the website says. Non-crisis volunteers — those who perform office and clerical work, mostly — do not go through any training but are bound to confidentiality.

In 2013, the group received $50,963 in donations, according to its most recent publicly available tax filing.

Contact Justin A. Hinkley at (517) 377-1195 or jhinkley@lsj.com. Follow him on Twitter @JustinHinkley. Sign up for his email newsletter, SoM Weekly, at on.lsj.com/somsignup.