Enablers From the Top: The People Accountable for the USA Swimming Sex Abuse Scandal

I’ve been hard on USA Swimming’s executive director, Chuck Wielgus, for covering up the decades-long and ongoing scandal of widespread child sex abuse in our national swimming program. Wielgus deserves every bit of the criticism, since he has consistently lied and misled on the public record even subsequent to the 2010 investigations by ABC’s 20/20 and ESPN’s Outside the Lines, which brought the matter to greater public attention.

Accordingly, at the bottom of this post I am listing contact information, taken from the USA Swimming website, for Wielgus and other responsible staffers.

But the story of accountability does not begin and end there. USA Swimming is authorized as the sport’s national governing body, via an act of Congress, by the U.S. Olympic Committee. USA Swimming has not only executive leadership, but also – as was the case at Penn State – a board of directors with fudiciary duties and an oversight function.

And there’s another organization, the American Swimming Coaches Association, which has played a crucial role in the culture of sex abuse, in distributing patronage, in cross-fertilizing between age-group and collegiate swimming – in short, contributing mightily to the national coaching carousel and the code of silence surrounding known molesters of our children.

More on all these aspects as coverage here continues.

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USA Swimming

Chuck Wielgus:  719.866.3579 – Executive Director, [email protected]

Susan Woessner: 719.866.3589 – Athlete Protection Officer, [email protected] 

Liz Hoendervoogt: 719.866.3542 – Athlete Protection Coordinator, [email protected]