Youth sports coach who said he was Olympic bobsledder jailed in sex abuse case

The ABC7 I-Team uncovered a sordid story of sexual abuse and shattered trust. A man who claims to have been an Olympic athlete and was a popular youth sports coach on Chicago's Northwest Side is now charged with criminal sexual abuse of a minor - and it's not the first time.

Rodney Woolford seemed to have it all: an Olympic past; a great wife and kids, a successful sports training business and he was a neighborhood coach who always organized children's' activities.

The I-Team has learned that Woolford is locked up in Cook County Jail on kidnapping and sexual abuse charges, and 20 years ago, he was convicted of similar sexual abuse.

In his Old Irving Park neighborhood, Woolford was an organizer of the annual Fourth of July party, and was often seen at the local Chicago Park District's facility coaching youth soccer and baseball.

"He did a lot of activities over at Independence Park where many, many of the kids in the neighborhood spend a lot of time. It's my understanding there he was there coaching some of the kids or maybe assistant coaching but he was there frequently and thought he was a nice guy," said Maura O'Leary, an Old Irving Park resident.

What Maura O'Leary and many of her neighbors didn't know, is that Woolford was a convicted sex offender. They knew him as a gregarious and charming family man who claimed to be a two-time Olympic bobsledder, and owner of a company called Woolford fitness, which offered swimming lessons to kids.

But when the I-Team asked the International Olympic Committee to confirm Woolford competed on behalf of the Virgin Islands and Trinidad and Tobago, we were told they had no record of him as an Olympian and that he was not listed as a participant for either Caribbean team.

The I-Team did find a record of another kind - Woolford's criminal history. In 1995, he pleaded guilty to fondling an 11-year-old girl and her 13-year-old sister in their Lake County home. He was sentenced to 8 months work release, registration on the Illinois sex offender website for 10 years and no unsupervised contact with minors.

But under previous Illinois law, Woolford was able to stop registering as a sex offender in 2005 and he is no longer on sex offender website.

Instead, he was on the field, in the gym and swimming pool with kids of all ages.

"Someone that you see there all the time, you sort of just assume they are part of the community or someone's parent and we just assume that if they are someone's parent they are safer than these average single person, I know it doesn't really work that way but that's what you feel so you tend to be more trusting," O'Leary said.

The pool was his connection to his most recent alleged victim. In August, Woolford was charged with taking a 13-year-old girl - a friend of his family - to his basement on two different occasions and molesting her.

"He's a devoted family man. He has children. He's a figure in the community and he is innocent of these charges," said Stephen L. Richards, Woolford's attorney.

Numerous neighbors now tell the ABC7 I-Team they are furious he's had such easy access to children. Woolford's most recent alleged victim was helping him teach 3- and 4-year-olds to swim at the John Hancock Center's swimming pool, through his fitness business.

He's charged with 14 counts including kidnapping with the intent to inflict harm and criminal sexual abuse of a minor.

"Rodney Woolford is absolutely and completely innocent of these charges. We plan to go to trial and he will be vindicated," Richards said.

While Woolford coached children at a Chicago Park District facility, he wasn't a registered volunteer according to park district officials. They wouldn't go on camera but because Woolford wasn't a registered volunteer, they say he didn't go through any required background checks - a procedure that might have turned up his sordid history and the Olympic stories he spun that seem to have protected his past.