Thursday, April 08, 2010
Inside USA Swimming: Secrets and Betrayal - Brian Ross investigates for '20/20'
News program, 20/20 is going to tear into USA Swimming's incompetent child protection policies tomorrow night. A source who has been updating me on the various aspects of this segment will be interviewed.
Here is a description of the 20/20 news program for European viewers. From Wikipedia: 20/20 is an American "television news-magazine", (similar in depth to a "print news-magazine"), broadcast on ABC since June 6, 1978. Created by ABC News executive Roone Arledge [citation needed], the show was designed similarly to CBS's 60 Minutes but focuses more on human interest stories than international and political subjects. The program's name derives from the "20/20" measurement of visual acuity.
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2 comments:
Coming from someone who knows the intimate details of how USA Swimming protects it's athletes, let me say that they are doing everything within their legal capacity to prevent this sort of thing. USA Swimming has had a background check system in place for several years now. It checks for any felony criminal convictions as well as charges involving felonies, illegal drugs, and sexual misconduct. Mr. King, to my knowledge, had none of these "red flags". Even if the background check was in place when he was committing his crimes, he still would have come up "clean". See this link for USA Swimming's response to these allegations: http://www.usaswimming.org/USASWeb/ViewNewsArticle.aspx?TabId=0&Alias=Rainbow&Lang=en&ItemId=2770&mid=2943
Unreported, I'm guessing, will be the fact that USA Swimming and it's peer national governing bodies around the world do their best to "keep up" with convicted sex offenders in their sport. When these offenders have moved across state lines or even outside the country, USA Swimming has gone so far as to notify their counterparts to ensure these scum don't re-offend.
USA Swimming's highest priority is the safety of its athletes within the framework of the law. They have been extremely proactive about this for many, many years.
Before you criticize USA Swimming's sexual molestation protection policies as "inadequate", be sure you actually know what they are. And if you care about constructive criticism, try making some suggestions on how they might be improved upon.
In my defense I wrote numerous letters but never received a reply. In a deposition Pat Hogan said he received my letter, claimed he wrote me back which he didn't and qualified his response stating that since I wasn't a member of USA Swimming, I summarily wasn't worth the time. (those are my words paraphrasing here as described by somebody at the deposition)
I did go through the procedures for background checks and reporting... I did not see a policy of no one-on-ones and other suggestions I have made.
If you want I will post all of the child protection policies to the blog and we can over them line by line and I think that you agree that they are anemic.
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