Underwater: The Greed-Soaked Tale of Sexual Abuse in USA Swimming and around the Globe

by Irvin Muchnick

Overview

While the celebrity victims of Dr. Larry Nassar and the USA Gymnastics sexual abuse scandals rightly got a lot of attention, the number of affected kids is far more numerous in swimming. Underwater tells the almost unbelievable story, in the U.S., Canada, Europe, Australia, Latin America, and the Middle East, of coaches who preyed on children while hopping from program to program, state to state, and even country to country, in a pattern similar to the pedophile priests of the Catholic Church.

Irvin Muchnick, an experienced investigative reporter of the dark side of our popular sports entertainments, gained access to thousands of pages of FBI files and other sources to expose scores of such scenarios, as well as the inaction of bureaucrats and even the most highly regarded politicians. The ranks of abusers include some of the most famous and celebrated coaches in swimming history. And there’s no fixing the problem, the author says, so long as hundreds of thousands of young swimmers annually — elite and casual athletes alike — remain at the mercy of the Olympic system’s money-hungry priorities.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781778523304
Publisher:	ECW Press
Publication date:	09/10/2024
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	300
Sales rank:	494,263
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Irvin Muchnick is the author of Wrestling Babylon, Chris & Nancy, Concussion Inc., and Without Helmets or Shoulder Pads: The American Way of Death in Football Conditioning. He has written articles for the New York Times, Salon, the Washington Monthly, People, Spy, Sports Illustrated, and other major outlets, as well as for Ireland’s Broadsheet and Village magazine and San Francisco’s Beyond Chron. He lives in Berkeley, CA.

Editorial Reviews

09/02/2024

USA Swimming, the sport’s national governing body, has a sordid history of looking the other way when coaches sexually abuse athletes, according to this searing report. Detailing how abusers evade accountability, journalist Muchnick (Without Helmets or Shoulder Pads) describes how after national team director Everett Uchiyama’s sexual abuse of a 16-year-old athlete came to light in 2006, USA Swimming club development director Pat Hogan, who was himself the subject of a sexual assault complaint in the 1980s, kept the scandal quiet and helped the coach secure a cushy position as a country club aquatics director. The stories of abuse survivors make clear that such underhanded dealings have long been unwritten policy at USA Swimming. For instance, Muchnick discusses how Sarah Ehekircher, who was raped by her high school coach in the 1980s, was among the first athletes to file a complaint with USA Swimming’s Safe Sport department, which dismissed Ehekircher’s allegations after a perfunctory hearing. Former USA Swimming director Chuck Wielgus comes in for particular opprobrium for hiring a lobbying firm in 2013 to defeat a California bill that would have extended the statute of limitations for sexual assault claims. The subject matter makes for grim reading, but the abhorrent institutional wrongdoing Muchnick uncovers deserves to be widely known. This will make waves. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

Irvin Muchnick made my carefully selected list of personal heroes long ago. Nobody rakes the muck, nobody shines a searchlight on human cockroaches with a more relentless sense of purpose than Irvin does. Underwater is a shining example of his work. It’s horrifying stuff that we desperately need to know.” — Scott Ostler, sports columnist, San Francisco Chronicle

“It may take wide readership of Underwater to push parents to demand reforms that better protect their families. Those involved in such programs should be sure to read this book.” — Beyond Chron

“The subject matter makes for grim reading, but the abhorrent institutional wrongdoing Muchnick uncovers deserves to be widely known. This will make waves.” — Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher