S.J. lawyer aids athletes abused by their coaches
B. Robert Allard seeks better safeguards, and vows to ‘ keep fighting’ the system
SAN JOSE — For the past seven years, San Jose lawyer B. Robert Allard has helped spearhead a national campaign to ban coaches who have sexually abused young swimmers.
The legal battles against U.S. swimming’s leadership and others have left the former personal injury litigator unexcited about the Rio Games that open Friday.
At a time the world comes
together for a two-plus week celebration of athletic achievement and the enduring human spirit, Allard can’t help reflect on a narrative that counters the happy, dramatic endings that will be presented throughout August.
“I would never watch the Olympics, much less with my wife and children,” he said. “It brings back too many beliefs that these athletes are exploited in every way.”
Allard’s disillusionment over how sports organizations monitor coaches who sexually molest athletes was underscored Thursday when the Indianapolis Star published a lengthy and damning report about USA Gymnastics.
The newspaper reported that top executives failed to alert authorities to many allegations of sexual abuse by coaches by relying on a policy that enabled predators to abuse gymnasts long after USA Gymnastics had received warnings.
Allard, 47, has no connection with gymnastics cases. But after representing 10 swimmers since 2009, the lawyer plans to “keep fighting this until the system is better,” he said.
Even as Olympians make their final preparations, the founding partner at Corsiglia McMahon & Allard is working on a civil suit filed in October in Los Angeles County Superior Court al- leging the United States Olympic Committee and the USA Taekwondo federation failed to take proper steps to protect underage athletes against a coach who sexually molested them.
The coach, Marc Gitelman, was found guilty last year of sexual abuse of three girls and sentenced to 4½ years in prison.
Defense attorneys said in court records that the girls provided no specific allegation that the USOC had prior knowledge of the coach’s “proclivity to sexually molest teenage girls.” USA Taekwondo attorneys filed similar claims.
The suit is a model for Allard’s approach to fixing what he considers a broken system. He lets the criminal cases punish the pedophile, then uses civil courts to raise awareness, empower the victims and try to force the institutions to create better safeguards. The Saratoga High alumnus does the bulk of his work voluntarily.
Allard’s second swim client, Jancy Thompson, said the third-generation lawyer has been given a gift to help others.
“Without him, I wouldn’t have had the confidence to get my voice back,” said Thompson, who alleged in a 2010 suit that a Bay Area coach began sexually abusing her as a young teenager.
Allard currently represents a high school molestation victim who filed a claim last year against San Ramon Valley Unified School District alleging its employees did not protect him from sexual abuse by a wrestling coach who has been sentenced to prison.
A district spokeswoman told this news organization in October that she could not comment on pending litigation.
Allard recently helped North Dakotan Dagny Knutson win a case of alleged betrayal and broken promises that led to the end of a career of one of the country’s most promising swimmers.
An Orange County Superior Court in June awarded Knutson $617,800 in damages against former USA Water Polo President Richard J. Foster for a breach of fiduciary duty and fraud while advising her to accept a financial settlement with USA Swimming, the sport’s national governing body.
Foster, who has long associations with top swim officials, said he will appeal the ruling.
“It wasn’t a sexual abuse case but it still was a case where an athlete was taken advantage of,” said Knutson, a student adviser at Grand Canyon University in Phoenix.
During a deposition a year ago, Foster said of Allard, “I can tell you point blank you’re one of the most hated attorneys in the aquatics world.”
A USA Swimming official declined to comment on Allard in a 40-minute interview from Rio de Janeiro. But Scott Leightman, swimming’s communication director, said his group “aggressively addressed the problem” six years ago when creating its Safe Sport program.
“It was a turning point,” Leightman said. “What we’ve been able to do since then is something we’re very proud of. We’ve taken the issue head on. We deal with victims all the time with ways to help them get through situations no one should have to go through.”
USA Swimming began publicly listing coaches and other officials who have been banned for violating a code of conduct that prohibits sexual advances or contact between athletes and coaches. The latest list has more than 130 names.
The group created a program with the help of law enforcement officials called Safe Sport that can be found on its website, usaswimming.org. The program includes education, a place to lodge complaints and a system to adjudicate disputes.
Allard has not participated in the program that officials say was created to rid the sport of sexual predators, according to a source with knowledge of Safe Sport adjudications. Allard says he uses the courts because he doesn’t trust a program that is connected to USA Swimming leaders.
In 2013, USOC officials created a policy to standardize background checks across every Olympic sport. Two years later, it announced the creation of the Center for Safe Sport to handle abuse cases for all national governing bodies.
It was hailed as an independent body similar to the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency. But it hasn’t become operational yet according to Leightman, who said swimming has the model program for sports sexual abuse cases.
Law is in his DNA
Allard never expected to challenge one of America’s most cherished sports institutions. He earned a law degree from the University of San Francisco in 1994 after graduating from Notre Dame. His grandfather practiced law in Oakland, and his father, Bernard James Allard, was a wellknown Santa Clara County defense lawyer.
While the law was in his DNA, Allard didn’t find his passion until after leaving his father’s firm at a time he struggled with prostate cancer. Physicians removed his prostate in 2008 and he has been cancer free since.
The next year, a father of a teenage girl asked Allard to help them seek legal action against San Jose’s Andrew King, who eventually was sentenced to 40 years in prison for sexually abusing Bay Area girls he coached.
Allard, a father of four, dropped a lucrative career in personal injury law to represent sexual molestation cases.
“When this came along it snapped: This is what you need to do,” he said.
By 2010, Allard had expanded the reach of the civil suit against King to include USA Swimming because of allegations its leaders had allowed abusive coaches to continue working with kids.
“These kids are totally powerless, they’re voiceless, they’re totally innocent,” said Allard, who goes to trial this week in a case involving sexual abuse at a YMCA day care facility. “We’re talking about them being stripped of their identity, of their integrity, of their sense of trust.”
Some of the swimmers Allard represented have resolved their issues with trust.
Thompson, 35, and the mother of two, works with sex abuse victims for the Stanislaus County District Attorney’s Office. Six years ago, she sued USA Swimming and her coach, Norman Havercroft, alleging he manipulated, humiliated and sexually abused her from 1994 to 2002. Havercroft, who coached at West Valley Swim Club in Saratoga, reached an out-of-court settlement with Thompson two years ago.
She has teamed with Allard to lobby for California legislation that would change the age for victims to file a civil complaint against predators. They currently must do it by 26.
Knutson, 24, works with a nonprofit group helping children caught in human trafficking and sexual exploitation. She said winning her case wasn’t about punitive damages.
“Let it be a platform to speak about this,” she said of athletes’ exploitation. “I just wanted it to have a bigger impact than monetary.”