Signed on 14 February 2018 as Public Law 115-126, the Protecting Young Victims from Sexual Abuse and Safe Sport Authorization Act of 2017 did three separate things. The one that changed daily behaviour inside American sport is the reporting duty.
Twenty-four hours, and a criminal consequence
Adults who are authorised to interact with minor or amateur athletes at a facility or event run by a national governing body must report suspected child abuse, including sexual abuse, within 24 hours to law enforcement. Failure to report is not treated as a policy breach inside the sport. It carries criminal penalties, which is what moved the obligation out of the realm of internal handbooks.
Ten years, or until the age of 28
The Act extended the civil limitation period for victims of child sexual abuse: a claim may be brought within ten years of the date the victim discovers the violation, or within ten years of reaching the age of 18. The practical effect is that conduct from a decade earlier remains actionable, and so do the institutional decisions taken around it.
The body the Act created
The statute also established the US Center for SafeSport as the independent entity with jurisdiction over abuse cases in the Olympic and Paralympic movement in the United States, taking those cases out of the hands of the federations whose staff were often the subject of them. Its funding was fixed by statute two years later, at the figure described in the entry on the 2020 Act.
Why the two Acts are read as one
The 2017 Act built the duty and the independent body. The 2020 Act paid for the body, raised athlete representation on the boards, and gave Congress the power to dissolve the committee's board and decertify a federation. Separately, each looks like a reform; together, they are a single transfer of authority over athlete protection out of the sports bodies and into a statutory frame with criminal exposure attached. The same legislature used the same technique on doping two years later, with its own federal offence and its own penalties — see the entry on the Rodchenkov Act.
What it does not do
The Act does not make the sports body the investigator. The 24-hour duty runs to law enforcement, not to a compliance officer, and an internal report is not a substitute for it. That is the single most commonly mishandled part of the obligation: a coach who tells the federation and not the police has not discharged the duty.
Where this is written: Public Law 115-126, text and history at congress.gov.