Troubled waters: USA Swimming's struggle to cover up its sexual abuse crisis
SalonAt the annual United States Aquatic Sports Convention, one year in the late 1990s, a prominent Indianapolis sports lawyer named Jack Swarbrick first warned USA Swimming, the sport's national governing body, that it had better prepare itself for the sexual abuse issue. Amid mounting public criticism of his televised interview performances, on both "20/20" and in a similar report on ESPN's "Outside the Lines," Wielgus established a USA Swimming program called Safe Sport, which the parent Olympic Committee would expand in 2017 with a new agency, the U.S. Center for SafeSport. USA Swimming's "captive" insurance company — headquartered in Barbados Belying their homegrown image, youth sports are big business. In his July 9, 2014, letter to then-director James Comey, Miller requested "that you fully investigate USA Swimming's handling of both past and present cases of child sexual abuse."