Rick Curl, Mark Schubert, Ad’m Dusenbury, and the Sands of Time in Mission Viejo Swimming and Sex Abuse

I recently remarked on the featured appearance on the American Swimming Coaches Association program in Las Vegas of Ad’m Dusenbury of the well-known Nadadores club in Mission Viejo, California. See “Get Set for the Conventions of Our Two Major National Sex Abuse-Enabling Swim Organizations. Wait! Which One Is Which?”, https://concussioninc.net/?p=5941.

Earlier this year Scott Reid of the Orange County Register did some fine reporting on controversy within the Nadadores over Dusenbury’s relationship with a 16-year-old swimmer. See https://concussioninc.net/?p=5450.

Yesterday I got a tip about the USA Swimming file on Dusenbury, from a source I trust. “This guy has been ‘under investigation’ for 13 months,” the source said. “It’s still on the list of cases that will be heard but the Rick Curl and other, more pressing cases climbed above it. They also apparently placed it behind other cases because Dusenbury had ‘removed’ himself from the sport.”

Yeah, right, removed himself from the sport — yet still speaking at ASCA conventions. Though that’s understandable, since ASCA executive director John Leonard has reminded us, “We do not have an organization that deals directly with children, nor is that part of our purpose in any way, shape or form.”

You could write a book just on Mission Viejo. That’s where defrocked Olympic head honcho Mark Schubert coached back in the day; he is now being sued by coach-philanthropist Dia Rianda, who claims he fired her for whistleblowing on sex abuse and accepted a $625,000 severance on USA Swimming which is conditioned on sealing his lips regarding Curl and other members of the sport’s gallery of mentoring heroes.

Mission Viejo is also one of the places where Curl raped Kelley Davies (not that he discriminated — he also molested her in her own home). They were attending a national meet there together.

Which reminds me of a story.

As readers of this blog know, I got involved in reporting on the national swimming scandal after the former coach of my own kid’s club in California, Jesse Stovall, pleaded no contest to felony statutory rape charges in connection with his “chaperoning” of his star swimmer to a national meet in Orlando.

The evidence in that case includes the anecdote that Stovall also earlier had accompanied the swimmer to a meet in Mission Viejo, where — she excitedly related to friends — he let her get behind the wheel of his car.

She was 15 years old.

Irv Muchnick