by Irvin Muchnick and Tim Joyce

Congressman George Miller and the House Committee on Education and the Workforce need to be paying close attention to the Alex Pussieldi story. Here’s yet another reason why.

We already know a lot about the mysterious Pussieldi. But one thing Concussion Inc. doesn’t yet know is his immigration status. A native of Brazil, Pussieldi could be a naturalized United States citizen. Or he could have dual citizenship. Or he could be a Brazilian citizen who works in the U.S. under one of several work visa or “green card” categories.

Whatever Pussieldi’s status, we can be confident that John Leonard, executive director of the American Swimming Coaches Association, is on the case.

Earlier this year Leonard told member coaches that ASCA had retained the services of a new law firm specializing in these issues. Here’s the announcement:

For readers new to our coverage, ASCA is the organization, with powerful patronage connections in the international swimming world, whose explicit position, in Leonard’s own words, is that it is not concerned with children “in any way, shape, or form.” In USA Swimming reform deliberations, Leonard’s is always the loudest voice stonewalling efforts to hold coaches to teacher-modeled standards for sexual misconduct.

When a coach gets suspended, banned, or “flagged,” Leonard and ASCA are quick to swoop in with new affiliated employment opportunities. After Mitch Ivey’s 1993 dismissal by the University of Florida, Leonard helped arrange Ivey’s new coaching position at Trinity Prep in Winter Haven, Florida; between then and Ivey’s lifetime ban by USA Swimming, just last year, Ivey wrote training literature for ASCA, probably on a contract basis.

After Dustin Perry was handed an 18-month suspension by USA Swimming in 2003, he got work in Mexico for ASCA Hall of Fame coach Jack Simon. Perry even used the contacts there to advance his program of importing foreign swimmers who lived with him throughout his reign of plunder, which involved short-term club coaching tenures in one new state after another. With the help of ASCA, Perry became the poor man’s Alex Pussieldi, until our reporting this year drove Perry out of Carson City, Nevada, and into exile.

Complete links to our Alex Pussieldi investigation are athttps://concussioninc.net/?p=8652.

See also:

American Swimming Coaches Association Moves Toward Acknowledging That Dealing Directly With Children Is Kind of, Sort of, Its Mission