4-year sentence for former high school coach who sexually assaulted 2 students
A former high school coach accused of sexually assaulting two student-athletes will spend more than two years in prison, followed by a lifetime on supervised release.
Mark Kosloski, 48, pleaded guilty in September to two counts of third-degree criminal sexual conduct, each stemming from cases filed against him last spring. Kosloski had been an assistant volleyball coach and head boys basketball coach at North Lakes Academy.
Two female students — one volleyball player, one soccer player — said Kosloski used his role as a coach as a means to begin inappropriately touching them, behavior that eventually led to sexual assault. One of the students was 17 when the encounters occurred. The other had recently turned 18 when the assault happened.
Kosloski, of Rush City, was sentenced to 36 months in one case and 48 months in the other, but he will serve the sentences concurrently, according to court documents. He'll be in the St. Cloud Correctional Facility for at least two-thirds of that time, wit the rest spent on supervised release.
He will be on conditional release the rest of his life, and must register as a predatory offender.
In January, the former volleyball player who was 17 when Kosloski assaulted her filed a civil lawsuit against both him and North Lakes Academy. The suit accuses the Forest Lake school of failing to properly vet Kosloski before his hiring — allowing him to pay for and submit his own background check, which failed to uncover his public history of sexual assault.
Kosloski, the civil suit says, was convicted of sexual assault in Wisconsin in 1999, after being accused of sexually assaulting a 16-year-old student whom he had been coaching. Investigators also indicated there may have been more victims.
All of this was readily available through a "basic, inexpensive background check," the suit says. The background check submitted by Kosloski when applying for the North Lakes Academy job showed, inaccurately, he had no criminal history, according to the lawsuit.
The suit argues the school "should have known" Kosloski "was potentially dangerous," and that by employing him, the school put students, including the victim, in harm's way.
North Lakes Academy, in a statement, said it "denies the allegations in the lawsuit including those related to the background check and it does not comment specifically on pending litigation."
