Burgeoning Evidence in Gainesville Swim Coach Abuse Cases Shows Team’s Plea of Ignorance Is the Usual Bunk

by Irvin Muchnick

In an article on Joey Diaz, the coach at Makos Aquatics in Gainesville, Florida, who was arrested for child porn — and whose alleged molestation victims now seem to total at least seven across a period of three years — SwimSwam.com included an assertion characteristic of its less-than-meets-the-eye coverage:

“[T]he club … confirmed that they had no prior knowledge of the situation, which is not the case in many instances of arrested coaches …”

SwimSwam doesn’t explain how a canned club statement claiming innocence “confirms” anything. Nor does SwimSwam name even one of the “many instances” in which other teams had “prior knowledge of the situation.”

And make no mistake: The Makos protestation that its coaches and board had no inkling that Diaz might have been conducting himself inappropriately is malarkey, according to multiple sources in the North Florida swimming community. Diaz regularly had  young swimmers over to his house and drove them to practice, according to these sources.

There is an additional and specific piece of evidence regarding the club’s enabling of Diaz. For now, Concussion Inc. is holding off on publishing it, at the request of a father who believes the detail too explicitly exposes his son as a victim. The evidence obviously exists. No one on the Makos coaching staff or board responded to an email requesting comment on it.