Proposed U.S. Rule Seeks to Curb Sexual Abuse of Exchange Students

The U.S. Department of State has proposed a new rule that aims to help prevent sexual abuse of foreign youths in high school student-exchange programs by increasing the screening requirements for adults who interact with such students.

The proposed amendments to regulations for high school exchange programs would require criminal-background checks of all adults who work with the programs. The program sponsors would also have to run the names of all adults in the households of host families through sex-offender registries kept by the states where the students would live while in the United States. The programs would be required to report allegations of sexual misconduct both to the State Department and to local law-enforcement agencies.

The rule, published Aug. 12 in the Federal Register , would apply to some 1,450 program sponsors that receive more than 275,000 exchange students in American secondary schools each year. The State Department will accept comments on the proposed...