Washington Post Bombshell on Coach Rick Curl Recalls USA Swimming’s ‘Emergency Hearing Process’ and Testy PR Director
Washington Post: Prominent Coach Rick Curl Under Investigation For 1983 Relationship With 13-Year-Old Swimmer
July 25, 2012FBI Should Investigate USA Swimming For Cover-Up of Coach Norm Havercroft’s Serial Sex Abuse
July 25, 2012In the previous post I introduced readers to the new Washington Post revelation about sex abuse allegations against swimming coach Rick Curl. Go read the story by The Post’s Amy Shipley, at http://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olympics/curl-burke-founder-rick-curl-faces-hearing-on-former-swimmers-account-of-underage-sexual-relationship/2012/07/25/gJQAg78q8W_story.html, and come back.
One thing this helps clarify is USA Swimming’s muddled “emergency hearing process.” Shipley writes: “Emergency hearings generally take place in about 10 days; the board can rule to suspend membership pending a full board review that would occur within about another 45 days.”
As readers know from my long article from the Olympic Swimming Trials – which went up yesterday at MomsTeam.com after Yahoo Sports, which had sent me to Omaha, decided it had better things to do – on June 28 I politely approached Karen Linhart, the public relations director for USA Swimming, on the pool deck. I asked Linhart for the status of a similar “emergency hearing” that had been announced for one of Rick Curl’s employee coaches, Noah Rucker, following Rucker’s arrest in Virginia on charges of a sexual relationship years earlier with one of the underage swimmers he had coached at a high school in Virginia.
“We’re here for a competition, not to talk about that,” Linhart snapped.
Then Linhart threatened to have security evict me from the premises. Her grounds were that the pool deck area was off-limits, even though many people were wandering randomly through that area during warm-ups. Earlier, USA Swimming had refused to grant me official media credentials for the Trials, which did not break my heart.
My nearly 5,000-word piece, “Widespread Sex Abuse of Young Female Swimmers Continues To Plague USA Swimming,” is at http://www.momsteam.com/poisoned-waters-sex-abuse-by-male-coaches-of-female-swimmers-continues-despite-USA-Swimming-efforts#ixzz21YdxJWRD.
Irv Muchnick