Yahoo Sports Commissioned Swimming Sex Abuse Investigation – Then Was Afraid to Publish It. Read the Story Exclusively at concussioninc.net.

Three weeks ago the sports site ThePostGame.com flew me to Omaha for the Olympic Swimming Trials – backdrop for a 4,000-plus-word investigation of the continuing scandal of child rape in USA Swimming, the U.S. Olympic Committee’s national governing body for the sport.

ThePostGame is an affiliate of Yahoo Sports, which underwrote the travel in the expectation that the completed story would be linked at the main portal of Yahoo.com.

My piece was edited to the mutual satisfaction of the editor and myself and kicked upstairs to Yahoo Sports. All of my interactions with ThePostGame were professional and supportive of getting this piece published. Yet everything came to a halt two weeks ago. Meanwhile, the Olympic swimming season marched on – as did the parallel Penn State scandal, which got new life a week ago today with the release of the Freeh Report. Since I was never told why Yahoo Sports refused to publish the article it had co-commissioned, the logical explanation is that the publisher simply got cold feet.

Tomorrow, the story will see the light of day on this blog under the headline “Poisoned Waters.” The subhead: “In a week of pre-Olympic glory in Omaha, and in the season of Penn State, the story of widespread sex abuse of underage girl club swimmers doesn’t make a wave.”

I am publishing the Yahoo edit, so that readers can judge for themselves whatever it was that Yahoo apparently was so afraid of.

Later I will supplement the article with links to the facsimiles of many primary-source documents quoted therein. I also will post material that was edited out earlier in the process, as well as commentary on other topics in the ongoing saga of our national competitive swimming program’s hidden shame. From a major outlet, we now have further evidence of the media’s collusion in that “hidden” part.

My short ebook PENN STATE IN THE POOL: The Cover-Up of the USA Swimming Youth Coach Sex Abuse Scandal, published in April, is available on Amazon Kindle at http://amzn.to/If3OFQ. Non-Kindle readers can order a PDF file of the ebook directly from this site by remitting $1.49, via PayPal, to paypal@muchnick.net.

Thank you for reading and supporting independent journalism on sports-themed public health issues.

Irv Muchnick