Muchnick & Joyce podcast on the Miller-FBI documents on USA Swimming:
by Tim Joyce and Irvin Muchnick
Congressman George Miller has released an exchange of summer letters with the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in which the ranking minority member of the House Education and the Workforce Committee requests FBI intervention in the USA Swimming youth coach sexual abuse scandals.
Miller, a Democrat from Californias 11th District, wrote to FBI director James B. Comey on July 9 to respectfully request that you fully investigate USA Swimmings handling of both past and present cases of child sexual abuse.
In the FBIs August 26 reply to Millers detailed and heavily footnoted 11-page letter, the bureaus acting deputy assistant director, Maxwell B. Marker, wrote in part, FBI representatives recently met with USA Swimming officials and discussed applicable federal violations associated with child exploitation matters [and] the vulnerabilities of those within USA Swimming.
The congressmans office released the letters Tuesday morning to a handful of media outlets, including Concussion Inc., with the provision that the material be embargoed from publication until midnight Thursday Eastern time.
A facsimile of the documents is viewable at http://muchnick.net/millertofbi.pdf.
The Miller-FBI exchange increases the movement toward direct federal government involvement in the abuse scandals in swimming and other sports under the aegis of the U.S. Olympic Committee through the Amateur Sports Act. Capitol Hill sources say that Miller, who is retiring from Congress at the end of the current term, is in active discussions with other legislators in both the House and the Senate about pursuing the USA Swimming investigations in 2015.
Next year is also when the Government Accountability Office is expected to deliver a report, requested by Miller last year, about the relationship of amateur sports programs to federal laws on the reporting of abuse.
The Miller letter to the FBI contains the strongest public language yet by a federal official in relation to media revelations, many of them exclusively at Concussion Inc., on abuse cover-ups in swimming:
In isolating the lapses of USA Swimmings Safe Sport program, initiated in 2010, Miller cited the reporting by Joyce of a 2011 case in Alaska: After nine months without response to a complaint involving the abuse of a 15-year-old girl, USA Swimming eventually declared that the case had been reviewed and closed.
[A]nther example where USA Swimmings Safe Sport Program rules do not appear to have been followed was in Holyoke, Massachusetts, in 2012, the congressman wrote.
Miller also discussed, without naming him, the multiple investigations into the misconduct of Alex Pussieldi, who is now retired from coaching in Florida and working as a national television network swimming commentator in his native Brazil. Miller cited a cover story about Pussieldi earlier this year in South Floridas New Times weeklies; the article heavily quoted Muchnick and Joyce, and cited Concussion Inc.s coverage:
USA Swimming did not address the videotaping, child sexual abuse, and child pornography allegations [against Pussieldi], and to date, the organization has neither commented on, nor acted on, that information. Regrettably, the coach was subsequently hired by other private schools.
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Muchnick & Joyce podcast on the Miller-FBI documents on USA Swimming: