MARIETTA, Ga. -- A 30-year-old tennis coach who taught young people at a Marietta park has been accused of child molestation for allegedly having inappropriate contact with a student.

Laurel Park is the tennis center of Marietta and the city hired a company called Allcourt to operate the facilities, hold tournaments and arrange lessons.

Cary Sutton, 30, was a part-time instructor and it was his alleged relationship with a 12-year-old student that led to his arrest. The girl’s parents alerted police.

“They were worried about an inappropriate relationship between their daughter and a tennis instructor at the park," said Detective Gwen Lewis with the Marietta Police Department.

The arrest warrant accuses Sutton of kissing the girl on the tennis complex grounds. The report also said he provided her with a cell phone of her own, upon which he allegedly sent her illicit text messages and inappropriate pictures of himself.

Parents told Channel 2 they are upset that a man with prior convictions of statutory rape was allowed to coach tennis in a city park. State records show Sutton spent more than two years in state prisons in the late 1990s on two counts of statutory rape for incidents in Douglas and Coweta counties.

City officials said they conduct background checks on their workers, but had not, at least until now, demanded Allcourt do the same.

“We did not have a clause in our contract that required Allcourt to perform similar background checks," said Rich Buss with the Marietta Parks and Recreation Department. "We will have that in our contracts in the future and we have already been assured by the president of Allcourt that they are now undertaking background checks on any of their part-time employees."

The president of Allcourt told Channel 2's Ross Cavitt it is their policy to perform background checks on all of their employees, but Sutton was basically an independent contractor working eight hours a week and the president admitted they did not do a background check on him. The president said they will perform background checks on everyone from now on.