Women file lawsuits against USA Swimming
Two former coaches from San Jose named in sexual abuse allegations
Five of the six women who have filed a series of civil lawsuits alleging USA Swimming and its officials did not do enough to stop sexual abuse they suffered at the hands of their coaches competed in the Bay Area.
Though some of the women have spoken out for years, the suits represent a collective effort to get USA Swimming, the sport’s national governing body, to clean house and put into place measures to prevent future abuse.
The suits, filed in Alameda County Superior Court, named two former coaches from San Jose — Mitch Ivey, a onetime U.S. Olympic and national team coach, and convicted child abuser Andrew King. Also named in the suit are USA Swimming, its Southern and Northern California associations and former U.S. national team director Everett Uchiyama, who like Ivey and King has been banned.
Robert Allard, a San Jose lawyer
who for the past decade has represented sexual abuse victims, called out USA Swimming executive director Tim Hinchey in a conference call with reporters Wednesday.
“Each and every one of these women has been betrayed in many ways by many people far beyond their abusers,” said Allard, who is representing some of the women in the suits. “Now that these brave women have finally been given the podium to speak, you need to do more, much more.”
The suits highlight problems in U.S. Olympic sports that gained national attention in recent years with the USA Gymnastics’ saga. That sport’s former team physician, Larry Nassar, was convicted in 2018 to 175 years in prison for decades of sexually abusing athletes, including Olympic stars.
Four of the Bay Area swimmers — Debra Grodensky, Katie Kelly, Caren McKay and Suzette Moran — allowed their names to be used in the complaints. Another went by her initials G.D. A sixth woman, Tracy Palmero, swam for Uchiyama in Tustin.
The suits allege USA Swimming, including former Executive Director Chuck Wielgus, and other top officials, the local associations and clubs were aware of Ivey, Uchiyama and King’s predatory behavior but refused to address it, creating a culture of abuse that exposed dozens of underage swimmers to sexual abuse and harassment. It is a culture, survivors maintain, that continues to exist within USA Swimming.
“We are aware of the information publicly released today in California,” USA Swimming said Wednesday in an unattributed statement. “The organization and its current leadership remain committed to providing a safe environment and a positive culture for all its members. The three named offenders have long been on USA Swimming’s list of Individuals Permanently Suspended or Ineligible for Membership due to the allegations of misconduct from the 1980s and 1990s, and the U.S. Center for SafeSport has recognized and honored our bans.”
Debbie Denithorne was a Bay Area 11-year-old with Olympic aspirations in 1980 when King approached her parents about coaching her.
“I could be an elite swimmer, perhaps an Olympian,” Denithorne recalled King telling her parents. “This was wonderful news because I had dreamed of being an Olympian, and it legitimized that dream because Andy King had coached Olympians.”
King soon would turn her Olympic dreams into a nightmare of alleged sexual abuse that continues to haunt her today, 40 years later.
King began grooming Denithorne, now Debra Grodensky, shortly after she started training with him at San Ramon Valley Aquatics, according to the complaint.
She was 12 when King began sexually assaulting her at USA Swimming-sanctioned meets and 15 when King had sexual intercourse with her for the first time at the 1984 U.S. Championships in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, according to the court filing.
Grodensky was 16 when King, then 37, asked her to marry him. Alarmed and frightened, she quit the sport.
Moran, a former East Bay swimmer who alleges she was sexually abused by Ivey, said in the conference call: “From the age of 10 I was exposed to a world where coaches were looking at underage swimmers as their next conquest.”
The survivors and attorney Allard said Wednesday that they hope the lawsuits force USA Swimming to require all its members to undergo a comprehensive education program on sexual abuse and other forms of abuse.
The suits are believed to be the first major filings under a new California law that allows sexual abuse victims to finally confront in court their abusers and the organizations that protected predators.
Assembly Bill 218, which was signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom last year and went into effect Jan. 1, created a three-year window to file past claims that had expired under the statute of limitations. The bill, authored by Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, D-San Diego, also extends the statute of limitations for reporting childhood sexual abuse from the time a victim is age 26 to 40. The period for delayed reasonable discovery also is increased from three to five years.
USA Swimming paid a Sacramento firm $77,627 in 2013 and 2014 to lobby against similar legislation. That bill was approved by the Legislature, but Gov. Jerry Brown declined to sign it into law.
The suits come as USA Swimming, USA Gymnastics and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee are under investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice and the Internal Revenue Service for the organizations’ handling of sex abuse cases and financial practices related to sex abuse crimes, according to eight people familiar with the investigations.
A Washington, D.C., based-team of about 10 federal investigators and prosecutors has interviewed more than two dozen people, including Olympic and world champion medalists, about the USPC and the national governing bodies as part of a probe into potential money laundering, sex trafficking and child sex labor.
While prioritizing success at the Olympic Games and World Championships and the sport’s branding, top USA Swimming executives, board members, top officials and coaches acknowledged in the documents that they were aware of sexually predatory coaches for years, in some cases even decades, but did not take action against them. In at least 11 cases either Wielgus — who died in 2017 — or other top USA Swimming officials declined to pursue sexual abuse cases against highprofile coaches even when presented with direct complaints, court documents showed.
King, 72, is serving time in Mule Creek State Prison in Amador County, according to California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation records.
Three years after King’s sentence, Ivey, a two-time Olympic medalist, received a lifetime coaching ban from USA Swimming. The action, taken in November 2013, came two decades after a history of sexual misconduct with Bay Area female swimmers first became public.
Ivey, once a teammate of Olympic champion Mark Spitz at the famed Santa Clara Swim Club, swam at Stanford and Long Beach State. He won a silver medal at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City and bronze medallion four years later in Munich — both in the 200-meter backstroke.
Ivy replaced the famed George Haines as coach of the Santa Clara Swim Club in 1974. By 1988, he was a member of the U.S. Olympic team coaching staff.
The allegations against Ivey, who could not be reached for comment, dated to the early 1980s when he coached at Concord Pleasant Hill Swim Club. Ivey, 33 at the time, had a relationship with Moran, a 16-yearold swimmer from Pleasanton-Foothill High, according to her complaint.
Ivey impregnated Moran, then 17, on or around December of 1983, the suit alleges. When she told Ivey of the pregnancy, “He said it was her problem to deal with it,” according to the suit. Moran had an abortion.
Moran, now a mother of three living in the Los Angeles area, told this news organization seven years ago that she wasn’t called to testify in the USA Swimming hearing for Ivey when he was banned in 2013.
“I’m not exactly sure how they sleep at night,” Moran said of U.S. swim officials. “They could have done this years ago.”