Based on Concussion Inc.’s Reports, Alaska Swim Club Rejects Dustin Perry Coach Application

by Tim Joyce and Irvin Muchnick

We reported earlier today that the USA Swimming club in Craig, Alaska, took a second look at Dustin Perry’s application to be head coach/aquatics director/lifeguard after reading Concussion Inc.’s coverage of the much-traveled coach. Perry somehow remains in circulation despite repeated misconduct complaints in the wake of a 2003-04 “suspension,” which he served by working in Mexico under an American Swimming Coaches Association Hall of Famer, Jack Simon — a connection that would also help Perry in his recruitment of swimmers from that country, some of whom he housed during his many U.S. coaching stops.

Now comes word from the 49th state that there will be no Dustin Perry hire there, weeks after his last sighting in Carson City, Nevada.

As a small and remote program, the Craig Waverunners tend to process “one applicant at a time,” a local club board source told us. But the collection of articles here “made it very easy to determine that we wanted to have nothing to do with Dustin.”

The story actually begins all the way back to July 2012, when one of these reporters — Joyce — was writing his very first articles on how USA Swimming’s “safe sport program,” installed a year earlier, was doing little or nothing to solve the sport’s generation-long problem of coach sexual abuse and systematic cover-up.

Then reporting for WBAL radio in Baltimore, Joyce wrote his second story about a predatory coach in Montana, Idaho, and Alaska whose abuses went unchecked. Soon thereafter, in an act of censorship whose blatant nature is even more evident today than it was at the time, WBAL dropped Joyce and scrubbed all his past reports from the station archive. Muchnick helped rescue them at Concussion Inc. – see https://concussioninc.net/?p=6178. In addition, Joyce republished the whole series at http://timothyjoyce.wordpress.com (the Alaska story is the second from the top).

Not long after that, Joyce and Muchnick began our partnership on USA Swimming coverage here at Concussion Inc.

Coincidentally, the name of the Alaska coach, who committed suicide, was Bob Goldhan. One of his stops was the Craig Waverunners.

Burned by that experience, a Craig club board member read Joyce’s 2012 article and then his first piece in our Dustin Perry investigation, which began on January 20 of this year. The board member contacted us, spoke with USA Swimming officials for clarification and further background, and made this week’s no-hire decision.

Complete links to the Dustin Perry series are at https://concussioninc.net/?p=8603.