In October 2005, just days after PIAA football official Harold J. Stancliffe faced his third set of felony charges in the past 26 years -- this time for distributing 176 computer images of young boys engaging in sex -- he officiated a North Allegheny School District eighth-grade football game. His license to officiate games was not suspended until a month later, nor revoked until nine months after he was sent to federal prison in 2007.

By the time Clint D. Helmick was branded a sexually violent predator last May after pleading guilty to an August 2007 assault on a 5-year-old girl in a Hempfield store, he had a criminal record dating back to 1983 that included a sexual battery conviction, another child abuse case and fraud convictions. He remained a certified Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association official until seven days after he pleaded guilty to the latest molestation charges.

The two men are among dozens of active and past PIAA-registered officials found with criminal records in a nine-month Pittsburgh Post-Gazette examination of 2,272 officials who have worked in this region since 2005.

The precise number of referees with criminal records was impossible to determine because the PIAA, citing privacy rules, repeatedly refused to confirm that individuals found in court records were, in fact, PIAA officials.

Along with child pornography and molestation charges, sports officials -- who are paid between $30-$70 a game -- have been convicted of gun crimes, drug offenses, assaults, animal abuse, fraud, various forms of theft, crimes of falsity, drunken driving and auto accidents that caused deaths.

Despite those troubling findings, Bradley R. Cashman, executive director of the PIAA, says there is no need for his organization to require officials to undergo criminal background checks. The PIAA relies instead on a self-reporting system that has become a don't-tell-don't-ask policy.

"While there are undoubtedly some sports officials who are currently registered who have prior criminal convictions, our multi-tiered approach has, in its totality, seemed to work and I am not aware of any incidents where PIAA-registered sports officials have engaged in improper conduct with student-athletes (other than in situations in which the sports official knew the student through other relationships and the person's role as a sports official was merely incidental to the situation)," Mr. Cashman wrote in response to queries by the newspaper.

PIAA rules call for immediate suspension and removal of any sports official charged with a felony or "whose conduct on or off the competition surface unfits the official to act."

But these individuals and dozens more whose records were found during the newspaper's investigation continued to hold licenses long after charges were filed and even long after they pleaded guilty to felony crimes dating back to the early 1980s.

When the Post-Gazette explained what it had found to school districts in the Western Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic League, school leaders on three fronts took action. The WPIAL is one of 12 districts under the statewide PIAA.

First the Allegheny Intermediate Unit Superintendents' Advisory Council asked the PIAA to require criminal background checks for sports officials. State law already requires anyone who has direct contact with students in schools to clear such checks every year.

"To delay will appear to the public that both the PIAA and schools have not properly cared for the safety of students," wrote Donna Durno, executive director of the advisory council on May 27, 2008, in a letter to Mr. Cashman. The PIAA has not responded to her.

Second, the WPIAL Board of Control approved a similar request and presented it to the PIAA in July, gaining approval in a narrow vote on the first of three legislative readings to demand background checks on all new officials. It will be presented for the second of reading in October.

Timothy O'Malley, executive director of the WPIAL, says requiring background checks will not hurt anyone.

"It is the opinion of our board that strong consideration be given in the certification process for PIAA officials to do background checks," he said.

And last, the Wilkinsburg School District, when told Mr. Stancliffe, a three-time felon, officiated games in the midst of his child pornography prosecution, announced it would immediately begin requiring all officials to produce criminal background checks.

Since 2006, the PIAA application has asked officiating candidates if they have been convicted of any of a wide assortment of crimes, and its by-laws contain a rule ordering officials to report any criminal charges filed against them. But when PIAA officials were confronted with numerous cases of officials with criminal pasts, they said none of the individuals had reported criminal charges -- before they were licensed or after.

In many cases, the result is that individuals not only officiated events long after they pleaded guilty to charges -- some continue to work to this day -- but also that others kept licenses until after they were sent away to prison.

Citing privacy rules, the PIAA refused to allow the Post-Gazette to examine applications for employment on Messrs. Stancliffe and Helmick or anyone else. After it was presented with Social Security numbers found in criminal court records, it agreed only to confirm, in some instances, whether particular individuals were certified and when any action was taken against their licenses.

From 2005 to 2008, Mr. Cashman said, 16 sports officials have been suspended and eventually removed by the PIAA.

In 1981, Allegheny County records show Harold Stancliffe was charged with robbery and related crimes after serving as the getaway driver in the theft of $8,487 from an Oakmont man.

He was convicted of one count of robbery, a felony which PIAA rules say should have rendered him ineligible to ever officiate a game. He was sentenced to five years probation and ordered to make restitution.

Despite his record, according to the PIAA, he became an official in 1994 in basketball and football and added softball to his license in 1998.

In 1998, Mr. Stancliffe was charged with five fraud-related felonies and making false reports to police when he claimed his 1987 Toyota was stolen from Overlook Drive, Schenley Park, collecting $4,043 from State Farm Insurance.

He pleaded guilty in a plea bargain to a felony fraud charge, received three years probation, and was ordered to make restitution.

"He did not disclose to PIAA that he had been convicted of robbery in 1981 and of fraud in 1998 and we were not previously aware of these convictions," Mr. Cashman said.

In 2005, Officer W. Robert Jones of the Greensburg police, part of a state police computer crime task force investigating child pornography, discovered Mr. Stancliffe allegedly downloading and trading illegal computer videos of young boys engaging in sex.

A raid of his Verona home not only produced a computer loaded with child porn, but also a set of brass knuckles and a .32-caliber pistol, illegal possessions for a convicted felon. A collection of stuffed zebras -- the slang term often used to describe athletic officials because of their black and white striped shirts -- was scattered throughout the home.

A probable cause affidavit accompanying his Oct. 11, 2005, arrest on 176 child pornography crimes, stated: "Stancliffe was present and admitted downloading child pornography and storing it in the shared folder on his computer."

As he awaited formal charges to be filed and afterward, records obtained from school districts by the Post-Gazette revealed Mr. Stancliffe officiated games at Wilkinsburg, South Park and North Allegheny.

On Sept. 21, 2005, he officiated a North Allegheny Carson Middle School eighth grade football game against Seneca Valley. On Oct. 5, 2005 he officiated a Wilkinsburg game. On Oct. 19, 2005, while he was out of jail on a $75,000 bond, he officiated North Allegheny's Marshall Middle School football game with Shaler.

In April 2006, Westmoreland County prosecutors handed the case over to the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania, which secured a federal indictment against him over the child pornography and gun charges.

On Oct. 30, 2006, Mr. Stancliffe pleaded guilty to one count of possession of material depicting the sexual exploitation of a minor and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. He was sentenced to 96 months in federal prison on March 9, 2007, and was incarcerated on Sept. 20, 2007, at the Federal Correctional Institution at Elkton, Ohio.

While the investigation found no record that he officiated games after October 2005, he was not officially removed as an official until Dec. 14, 2007, 26 years after his first felony conviction, 26 months after he was initially charged in the child pornography probe and almost three months after his imprisonment. He did not respond to a written request for an interview.

After Wilkinsburg School District school officials learned Mr. Stancliffe officiated a game there after he was implicated in child pornography crimes in October 2005, Archie D. Perrin Jr., superintendent, took action.

"In light of this matter, the Wilkinsburg School District will take the initiative and apply existing background check requirements and standards to subcontract hires; including independent contractors [officials] referred by registering authorities like the PIAA," said Mr. Perrin in a written response to questions about Mr. Stancliffe.

Mr. Cashman said he "promptly suspended" Mr. Stancliffe "upon my receipt of information that he had been accused of certain criminal offenses," even though the action was taken more than a month after his arrest, which was publicized on Oct. 20, 2005, in the Post-Gazette under a headline, "Referee accused of having child pornography." The day that story appeared, a WPIAL official who asked not to be named reported the arrest to the PIAA.

"Any delay in suspension would relate to when information was conveyed to me about the filing of criminal charges," Mr. Cashman said.

When 44-year-old Clint D. Helmick, who has been licensed to officiate baseball and basketball since 1986, pleaded guilty to an August 2007 indecent assault on a person less than 13 years old, he signed and initialed every paragraph of a lengthy sworn plea colloquy on his background and the reasons for his plea to demonstrate he was acting voluntarily.

In answer to a question about his previous criminal history, Mr. Helmick wrote he was found guilty of a 1983 sexual battery in Tennessee.

What he did not mention was that he also had a 1995 sex crime conviction in Beaver County and a conviction the same year on fraud-related charges in connection with a press credential scam aimed at securing free tickets to Cleveland Indians and Cavaliers professional baseball and basketball games.

In August 1995 a teenage clerk at a Dairy Mart Store in Patterson, Beaver County, accused Mr. Helmick of molesting her in the store.

A probable cause affidavit states the youth claimed Mr. Helmick brushed up against her "while passing within the aisles and on both occasions did fondle the victim's buttocks with his hands ... victim believing on both occasions the act was intentional," it stated.

He pleaded guilty to a first-degree misdemeanor of indecent assault and was sentenced on June 12, 1995, to five years of probation. While he stated in his plea bargain that he was not under any counseling, it was suggested he seek it.

Then in August 2007, he was charged in the sexual assault of a five-year-old child in a Gabriel Brothers store in Hempfield .

In a probable cause affidavit that led to his arrest, a Pennsylvania State Police trooper said the victim and her mother, brother and aunt were near the shoe section of the store "when a white male wearing a gray muscle shirt and maroon shorts came up to her and began rubbing a plastic coat hanger against her vaginal area overtop of her shorts.

"While this white male was doing this to the victim he was rubbing himself with his other hand and telling the victim to 'Look at me,' " the affidavit said.

The alleged victim ran hysterically to her mother, who reported the incident to store security. Once the child identified him and the store's video surveillance system showed Mr. Helmick walking away from the area, he was charged with felony molestation.

He pleaded guilty to one count of indecent assault of a minor.

On March 28, 2008, a "Criminal Behavior Forensic Assessment Report" prepared by the Pennsylvania Board of Probation and Parole for his Westmoreland County sentencing judge stated "... that the defendant meets the classification criteria of a sexually violent predator" and was subject to registration as a sex offender on his release from prison.

He faces a Sept. 18 hearing on the sexually violent predator status and sentencing Oct. 21 before Judge Debra A. Pezze of Westmoreland County Common Pleas Court.

According to records from school districts obtained by the Post-Gazette -- many of them incomplete -- Mr. Helmick worked numerous athletic events throughout the region, including a Ringgold-Chartiers Houston basketball game in January 2007.

According to Mr. Cashman, Mr. Helmick's license was suspended 33 days after the latest charges were filed. He was removed by the PIAA board July 25, 2008.

"Mr. Helmick did not disclose to PIAA that he had been convicted of any offenses," he said. Mr. Helmick did not respond to a letter and his lawyer did not respond to a telephone message.

In December 1998, a middle school guidance counselor at Canon McMillan reported to police that three eighth graders told her, "Thomas Ondrick [sic] had solicited the girls for oral sex, and sexual intercourse," according to an affidavit of probable cause filed with a criminal complaint against him.

According to the affidavit, the girls told police in July 1998 that they went to Mr. Ondrik's home to clean it to earn money for the annual Canonsburg Community Day at Kennywood Park.

When the cleaning was finished, according to the affidavit, Mr. Ondrik allegedly asked the girls if they wanted to "become his princesses" by allowing him to have sex with them for up to $100. The complaint says Mr. Ondrik allegedly began licking one girl's arm and trying to kiss her before they fled.

Mr. Ondrik, 76, a girl's softball official, was charged in March 1999 with three misdemeanor counts of corrupting children, a month later accepting a year of probation in an accelerated rehabilitation disposition program. Last month, the charges were dismissed and his record expunged because, according to court papers, he had "no criminal history either before or after this case."

The PIAA said his license was put into "inactive" status in March 2008 for unrelated reasons.

Until the Post-Gazette told him about the charges, Mr. Cashman said, he had no knowledge that Mr. Ondrik "was charged with, convicted of, or pleaded guilty or no contest to any offenses."

The incomplete records provided to the Post-Gazette from over 60 school districts did not show Mr. Ondrik officiating any game in the past three years.