Big Names and Courageous Voices in Women’s Sports Foundation Campaign to Keep USA Swimming Chief Sex Abuse Cover-Up Artist Chuck Wielgus Out of the International Swimming Hall of Fame

For those of you who missed it, yesterday’s Women’s Sports Foundation petition to the International Swimming Hall of Fame board of directors, calling for hall to cancel next month’s scheduled induction of USA Swimming chief executive Chuck Wielgus, is here and here.

Nancy Hogshead-Makar, senior director of advocacy for the WSF (https://www.womenssportsfoundation.org/), calls the first group of signatories of the petition “victims and stalwarts.” They include some of the biggest names in swimming, as well as those of lesser fame who have been molested, run over, and ground underfoot by this “amateur” sport’s abusive, multimillion-dollar machinery.

We apologize in advance for the incompleteness of the following rundown.

*****

Nancy Hogshead-Makar herself won four medals, including three golds, at the 1984 Olympics.

Diana Nyad last year, at age 64, capped her legendary career in open water swimming by completing the 110-mile Havana-to-Key West swim without the aid of a shark cage. She says she was abused as an early teen swimmer by her coach, now-retired Hall of Famer Jack Nelson, and the evidence is clear that she was.

Deena Deardurff Schmidt, a 1972 Olympic gold medalist, was sexually abused as an underage swimmer by Hall of Fame coach Paul Bergen. See https://concussioninc.net/?p=8372 and https://concussioninc.net/?p=8394.

The statutory rapes of Kelley Davies by her coach Rick Curl, an American Swimming Coaches Association Hall of Famer, were covered up by USA Swimming for a quarter of a century. It was Davies’ powerful victim impact statement at last year’s sentencing hearing for Curl in Maryland state court that led to the current Congressional investigations of Olympic sports sex abuse. See https://concussioninc.net/?p=7543 and passim.

Suzette Moran is one of the many abuse victims of famed coach Mitch Ivey, who was banned by USA Swimming last year — 20 years after ESPN’s Outside the Lines broadcast detailed charges against him. “I know very little about Mitch Ivey,” Chuck Wielgus testified to a court in 2010. See https://concussioninc.net/?p=8365.

Brooke Taflinger sued USA Swimming after her coach, Brian Hindson, landed in federal prison on child pornography and Peeping Tom video charges. Wielgus perjuriously told the court that allegations of hidden videos were “not on the radar screen” of the organization prior to 2008. See https://concussioninc.net/?p=7585 and passim.

Jancy Thompson is a sex abuse victim of coach Norm Havercroft. Her civil action against USA Swimming is barred by provisions of California’s statutes of limitations, and there is a renewed legislative effort in her state to allow victims of her age and situation to have their day in court. One consequence already from Thompson’s brave action is a dispute over discovery orders that led the California Supreme Court to release thousands of pages of previously concealed documents — files that were subsequently subpoenaed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. See https://concussioninc.net, passim.

Randy Reese is a former national championship coach at the University of Florida, an Olympic coach, a member of the International Swimming Hall of Fame, and a severe critic of the Chuck Wielgus regime at USA Swimming since 1997. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randy_Reese.

The International Swimming Hall of Fame board of directors consists of some of the most celebrated figures in the history of the sport, including Mark Spitz, Donna de Varona, and Aaron Peirsol.

Next at Concussion Inc: Muchnick & Joyce commentary, “Chuck Wielgus Belongs in the Hall of Justice — Not the Hall of Fame.”