UNITED STATES
Ms. Magazine
The following is an excerpt from “Misplaced Faith” in the Fall 2014 issue of Ms. Read the whole article by getting a digital subscription to the magazine.
She is special.
That’s what club swim coach Norm Havercroft in Saratoga, California, told the mother of 15-year-old competitive swimmer Jancy Thompson in 1997. And because she was so special, Havercroft needed to spend one-on-one time with her every morning, at 5 a.m. So the mother, who also had an infant son, got up before dawn to drive her daughter to the pool and wait in the parking lot, breastfeeding the baby.
But, according to the allegations of Thompson’s 2010 lawsuit, the coach wasn’t giving her training tips. Before the rest of the team arrived for practice, Thompson claimed, Havercroft allegedly was taking her into a private room and molesting her. …
Sounds like the Catholic Church hierarchy. Indeed, over the past decade, sexual-abuse scandals have emerged in a number of corners of American culture—from the priesthood to the military to college campuses. It’s not that those abuses hadn’t been going on for decades, or even centuries, but survivors have typically been scared or shamed into silence. No more. One of the latest actions taken by abuse survivors from the swimming world was to challenge the induction of longtime USA Swimming executive director Chuck Wielgus into the International Swimming Hall of Fame. Nineteen victims of coaching sexual abuse—including Cuba-to-U.S. marathon swimmer Diana Nyad (who has alleged that her coach Jack Nelson molested her 50 years ago)—signed a petition pointing out Wielgus’ longtime inaction against abusive coaches.
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