UNITED STATES
Yahoo Sports
May 21, 2018
By Ryan Young
Olympic swimmer and former world-record holder Ariana Kukors filed a lawsuit on Monday against USA Swimming, alleging that officials knew her coach Sean Hutchinson sexually assaulted her while she was a minor.
The lawsuit, filed in Orange County, California, alleges that USA Swimming covered up the abuse and manipulated its background check system so that Hutchinson wouldn’t fail the test.
“We are here today to force USA Swimming, the national governing body of the sport of swimming in America, to accept responsibility for allowing, and in fact, enabling a known predator coach to sexually molest for almost a decade, my client Ariana beginning when she was just a young child,” Kukors’ attorney Robert Allard told the Seattle Times on Monday.
Kukors, 28, accused Hutchinson of sexually assaulting her starting when she was 16 and continuing to have sexual contact with her until she was 24. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported that Kukors alleges that he took nude photos of her when she was a teenager. Kukors told police that Hutchinson sexually assaulted her both on trips and while training in Seattle, and that he used his position as her coach at the Seattle club to “groom her” for sexual assault starting when she was 13.
Kukors said that in 2005, when she was 15 or 16, USA Swimming officials — including former director Chuck Wielgus — knew that she was involved in an inappropriate relationship with Hutchinson, according to USA Today.
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