USA Swimming’s Rick Curl Timeline Is Missing Some Items on the Front End. Let Me Help.

Ever helpful to the nation’s least diligent journalists, USA Swimming has released a timeline of the Rick Curl investigation. Curl, who raped his swimmer Kelley Davies repeatedly in the 1980s, then paid $150,000 in hush money to her family, today waived his hearing before the national board of review and was banned for life — the most prominent coach ever to achieve that dubious distinction.

This outcome followed by two days the filing of a wrongful termination lawsuit by a former employee of multiple-times U.S. Olympics head coach Mark Schubert. The plaintiff, swimming philanthropist Dia Rianda, says Schubert received a $625,000 severance package from USA Swimming, which included his agreement not to talk about his knowledge of the Curl crime and related matters. USA Swimming says, au contraire, there was no Schubert severance agreement — a year and a half after going to the trouble of circulating a mass email to membership in which it specifically stated that there was.

Below is USA Swimming’s Curl timeline.

Below are my own additions to the USA Swimming timeline. Let’s see how much of this makes its way into tomorrow’s Washington Post. Amy Shipley, the Post reporter who broke the Rick Curl / Kelley Davies story in July, is no longer with the newspaper. Nor is Bernstein. Last I heard, however, Woodward was still hanging a shingle there.

USA Swimming’s Curl timeline

1.                  April 2011: USA Swimming receives a report from a former swimmer who had heard from his roommate that Mr. Curl had an inappropriate relationship with a minor female swimmer in the 1980s and that a confidential legal settlement had been entered into.  USA Swimming initiates an investigation.

2.                  April 2012: USA Swimming identifies and locates Kelly Currin. USA Swimming’s Director of Safe Sport contacts Ms. Currin who agrees to file a complaint. USA Swimming’s investigator interviews Ms. Currin. Investigation ongoing.

3.                  July 23, 2012:  USA Swimming initiates a petition against Mr. Curl under its rules, seeking to temporarily suspend his membership at an emergency hearing, and to permanently ban him from membership and place his name on USA Swimming’s published list of Individuals Permanently Suspended or Ineligible for USA Swimming membership.

4.                  August 1, 2012:  Mr. Curl waives his right to an emergency hearing, and his USA Swimming membership is temporarily suspended by the USA Swimming National Board of Review, pending a final hearing on the action, set for September 19, 2012.*

5.                  September 18, 2012:  Mr. Curl informs the National Board of Review that he is: voluntarily and permanently relinquishing his USA Swimming membership; waiving his right to a final National Board of Review hearing, and accepting the sanction requested by USA Swimming.*

6.                  September 18, 2012:  The USA Swimming National Board of Review enters an order revoking Mr. Curl’s membership, permanently banning him from membership; and directing that his name be placed on USA Swimming’s published list of Individuals Permanently Suspended or Ineligible for USA Swimming Membership.

Muchnick’s supplements to USA Swimming’s Curl timeline

1.        April 9, 2010: ABC’s 20/20 airs an investigative report on widespread sex abuse in USA Swimming.

2        Later in April 2010: The Post‘s Shipley contacts Kelley Davies-Currin.

3.        May 12, 2010: Chuck Wielgus, executive director of USA Swimming, states in a court deposition in a civil lawsuit: “I have — I have heard, just within the past three to four weeks, that there was some sort of a settlement between Rick Curl and a victim or a victim’s family.”

4.        July 26, 2010: David Berkoff writes in an email, “Denying knowledge of Rick Curl, Mitch Ivey and others banging their swimmers! It’s a flat out lie. They knew about it because we (coaches and athletes) were all talking about it in the late 1980′s and early 1990′s.… I was told Rick Curl was molesting Kelly Davies for years starting when she was 12 by some of the Texas guys.…”

5.        September 2010. Berkoff is elected to the USA Swimming board of directors for the second time.

Irv Muchnick