Reviewing the Reasons USA Swimming Chief Chuck Wielgus Should Be Fired During Senator Dianne Feinstein’s Probe of Amateur Sports Sex Abuse (Part 1, the Will Colebank Cover-Up)
April 4, 2017Flashback: ‘My Life of “O’Reilly”‘ (in honor of the current major advertiser exodus from ‘The O’Reilly Factor’)
April 7, 2017
Call For Dismissal of USA Swimming Chief Chuck Wielgus Now Accompanies Heat on USA GymnasticsPublished April 2nd, 2017
Reviewing the Reasons USA Swimming Chief Chuck Wielgus Should Be Fired During Senator Dianne Feinstein’s Probe of Amateur Sports Sex Abuse (Part 1, the Will Colebank Cover-Up)Published April 4th, 2017
by Irvin Muchnick
In 2006, lawyers and anti-abuse activists Nancy Hogshead-Makar, B. Robert Allard, and Jonathan Little note, “a parent presented Chuck Wielgus with compelling evidence of child sexual abuse of Everett Uchiyama, who was USA Swimming’s National Team Director. Within 24 hours, Chuck Wielgus allowed Uchiyama to resign quietly and had removed his membership in USA Swimming. Tragically, Wielgus informed no one – not even his directors or other senior staff at USA Swimming. Consequently, Pat Hogan, the Managing Director of Club Development, enthusiastically endorsed Uchiyama for a position working with children at a local country club; a club that many of Chuck Wielgus’ friends and their families would have been members.”
On October 7, 2013, at https://concussioninc.net/?p=8223, my colleague Tim Joyce and I opened our investigative series on Everett Uchiyama by reporting that his severance agreement included the promise of USA Swimming not to “move forward with any investigation.”
(We erred in this story, however, in predicting that California Governor Jerry Brown would sign into law state legislation SB 131, which would have reformed statute of limitations requirements for civil lawsuits against institutions alleged to have harbored and covered up for abusers. In fact, Brown wound up vetoing the bill.)
On October 8, 2013, at https://concussioninc.net/?p=8228, Joyce and I told of how USA Swimming executive Pat Hogan recommended Uchiyama for a position — which soon evolved into aquatics director — at the Country Club of Colorado, just a short distance from USA Swimming headquarters in Colorado Springs. (Hogan’s own history of abuse allegations is another whole story.)
On October 9, at https://concussioninc.net/?p=8232, we reported that USA Swimming regularly held board of directors meetings at the Country Club of Colorado.
And on October 16, at https://concussioninc.net/?p=8251, we reported the recollections of one of those board members when we confronted her with the key questions surrounding this sequence of events.