Is Real Reform at Hand to Curb Youth Coach Sexual Abuse? … Today at Salon

The Commission on the Future of the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee, established by Congress in 2020, last week issued its long-anticipated report. This 277-page document offers 12 recommendations, including the first serious proposals to wrestle with USOPC’s blatant failures in handling the sexual abuse crisis in youth sports. One of those recommendations would amount to the first fundamental retooling of America’s sports system since the Ted Stevens Amateur Sports Act of 1978….

As a reporter who been investigating this subject for more than a decade, I didn’t see such a strong report coming. The commission co-chair, University of Baltimore law professor Dionne Koller, last year downplayed the suggestion that a close examination of the SafeSport center was even part of her mission. The report in fact seeks to address multiple controversies within the U.S. Olympic movement, from pay equality for elite female athletes to the way bids are handled for American cities to host Olympiads. But it’s the sections about curbing abuse that have claimed the major headlines, and rightly so….

FULL TEXT AT https://www.salon.com/2024/03/10/americas-amateur-sports-are-plagued-with-scandal-is-reform-finally-coming/

Irvin Muchnick’s book UNDERWATER: The Greed-Soaked Tale of Sexual Abuse in USA Swimming and Around the Globe will be published later this year by ECW Press.