Cornell University’s Independent Student Newspaper Makes Waves by Naming the Accused in a Sexual Abuse Case. Here’s What Happened When I Did the Same, in a USA Swimming Scenario, in 2013.

SEE ALSO:

“‘Doe v. Muchnick’ Lawsuit Settlement,” July 15, 2013, https://concussioninc.net/?p=7823

by Irvin Muchnick

In the exploding case of a 2024 gang rape on the Cornell University campus that resulted in no prosecutions – but now is being revived because of new revelations from a civil lawsuit filing – the editors and reporters of the Cornell Daily Sun, the independent student newspaper there, made the bold call to publish the names of the accused parties. The New York Times coverage is at https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/29/nyregion/cornell-daily-sun-newspaper-rape.html.

Thirteen years ago, I did something similar as part of my reporting on widespread abuse within the programs of USA Swimming, in general, and the North Baltimore Aquatic Club, in particular. Here’s that story.

The case in question was just one of several at the Meadowbrook swimming complex owned by the Baltimore team, cradle of swimming great Michael Phelps. In this one, I wrote about the relentless months-long harassment – culminating on at least one occasion in blatant sexually abusive contact during a pool practice – of a teen male, who was on the autism spectrum, by other teen males.

For particular editorial reasons, I took the step of naming the bully-brats. My reasons included the connections of one of them in the elite swimming world, and the callous indifference on the part of North Baltimore head coach and boss Bob Bowman (Phelps’s famous coach) to the pleas of the victim’s family for corrective action, including discipline of the abusers.

On May 13, 2013, a process server knocked on the door of my apartment, across the continent in California, and presented me with papers in a lawsuit filed against me, in U.S. District Court in Maryland, by the family of the well-connected accused. The complaint alleged that I was “stalking” and “harassing” their son, and included numerous other misstatements of fact. The family sought a temporary restraining order against my published work, plus $1 million in compensatory and punitive damages.

The main pleading ran to 35 pages, with sophisticated production values, such as reproductions of facsimiles from my website. A legal expert told me he suspected USA Swimming had been a silent partner in the filing. “There is no doubt,” he said, “that there is big money behind this complaint. The attorneys must have spent at least 50 hours. At $500 per hour, that is $25,000. And that is conservative. And that is just for filing.”

The expert added: “I have not seen pictures and posts woven into a complaint like that before. They clearly know what they are doing. It is akin to ‘slut shaming’ when you go after the victim. That being said, the truth is on your side.”

Through the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, I retained the Washington law firm BakerHostetler to represent me pro bono. However, the arrangement couldn’t be made in time for a scheduled hearing later that day on the temporary restraining order (TRO) motion, before Judge William Bennett. I chose to appear by teleconference without counsel.

I argued that my blog posts were speech protected by the First Amendment. At the same time, upon being pressed by the judge, and in the interest of pragmatism, I agreed to remove the names of the minors involved in the February 2012 incident, as well as references arguably suggesting that I’d had access to records of Maryland government agencies involved in investigating the incident.

The upshot was that Judge Bennett denied the TRO. In its place, he issued the next day an interim “consent order” to which both sides agreed. This would become the basis of a final consent order, entered into two months later by Judge William D. Quarles Jr. The full text of the July consent order is in the post linked at the top of this article.

At the May hearing, Judge Bennett hammered plaintiffs’ counsel on their assertion that they were demonstrating likelihood of success on the merits with respect to the defamation count. “Isn’t there an alleged victim?” Bennett demanded. And wasn’t there a mother of the victim who was affirming the facts claimed in my reporting? Under these conditions and in the face of First Amendment law, the judge said he could not grant a TRO.

The judge was less friendly to me on the plaintiffs’ second count pertaining to the TRO argument. That one involved the concept of “inclusion by seclusion.” Essentially, what this refers to is law mandating that accused juvenile criminals not be named. The law also bars release of official information from investigations of them.

Some of my posts in dispute contained inelegant language that could have been interpreted to suggest that I had in my possession “the file” of the police or the state’s attorney or the juvenile services agency. Even when I tried to clarify to Judge Bennett, by stating that I was only suggesting that I had the “same information” as is in the prosecutorial file – not leaked documents or verbatim language from the records themselves – the judge challenged me (with some justification) as to how I could represent that it was the same. Was I saying that I had a source inside a government agency? (I had not been intending to say that, and if it were true such a source would have been in violation of the law.)

I told the court I was appearing by phone pro se for the limited and express purposes of (a) monitoring the proceedings, (b) offering my professional journalistic background and my layperson’s reinforcement of the primacy of First Amendment considerations, and (c) noting that I had been served only hours earlier and had not had an opportunity to retain counsel. So I was a little surprised that Bennett engaged me so aggressively on the inclusion-by-seclusion issue. At the same time, he struck me as fair overall, and as a responsible judge struggling to reach a result that would respect the First Amendment while not totally blowing off inclusion-by-seclusion, something he clearly took very seriously.

For me, the consent order, both in interim and final forms, flowed from a couple of calculations. I won’t be cute about the first one: I knew I was staring down the barrel of well-heeled legal firepower, and this wasn’t the hill I chose to die on.

But the other factor was the clincher: My reporting point had been made. Publicizing the heavy-handed tactics of the swimming establishment in attempting to silence me – and living to fight another day – was far more valuable to me than going to the mat over the edgy tactic of naming names.

And no one could be in any doubt over the emphatic fact that I was not silenced. Even in those surrounding months of 2013, the archives of ConcussionInc.net show dozens upon dozens of posts of investigative reporting, granular and otherwise, on sexual abuse in swimming. There were even other Baltimore-based items. In 2024, I would put this work into narrative long form in my book UNDERWATER: The Greed-Soaked Tale of Sexual Abuse in USA Swimming and Around the Globe.