Lawyers want USA Swimming banned list expanded
Attorneys of swimmers with lawsuits against USA Swimming say the Colorado Springs-based national governing body’s list of banned coaches is missing many names, including a Woodland Park resident arrested on suspicion of possessing child pornography.
Two coaches who served jail time, two coaches who were arrested and a coach fired from a Division I university weren’t part of the 46-person list, published last week by the NGB amid accusations of lax background checks and minimal safeguards to protect youth.
Not on the list is Willard Colebank Jr., who taught technology at Carmel Middle School until October 2007, when Colebank’s son gave police at least a dozen compact disks that belonged to Colebank with photos and videos of children engaging in sex acts. Colebank previously worked as education services director of USA Swimming.
Also excluded from the list:
• Michael Dolan, a former Pennsylvania high school coach who was sentenced to 1 ½ to three years in jail in November after admitting to sending sexually explicit text messages and offering money for sex to a 15-year-old swimmer.
• Mitch Ivey, the former University of Florida women’s coach who was fired in 1993 on the heels of an investigation into sexual harassment allegations and his relationships with his swimmers, one of whom, then 18, he married as a 30-year-old in 1979.
• Eric Lans, a former Massachusetts high school coach who was arrested in 1999, facing charges he raped a 12-year-old and forced a 10-year-old to perform oral sex on him.
• Daniel Mendenhall, a former California high school coach who served one year in jail and nearly three years in prison starting in 2004 for raping a 15-year-old swimmer.
Dolan and Lans weren’t certified by the NGB, USA Swimming communications director Jamie Fabos Olsen said. Olsen added the NGB has no control over high school coaches.
“There are names that aren’t on (the list) that should have been on there,” said Jonathan Little, representing a former Indiana University swimmer whose former coach got up to 35 years in prison in 2008 for secretly videotaping his swimmers while they showered.
“And more alarmingly, there are names not on there of people that are still coaching right now, and that knowledge goes back years,” Little added. “USA Swimming knows about these people. Why don’t they just get rid of them? … It’s sort of a free pass.”
USA Swimming executive director Chuck Wielgus did not comment for this story. USA Swimming said in a statement its safety measures include “a formal complaint reporting and national board of review process. It is through this process that individuals can have their membership revoked, and, in turn, appear on USA Swimming’s banned list.”
Of the 46 people who were banned for life by USA Swimming or permanently resigned their membership, 36 were because of sexual misconduct. Forty were banned since 2001, most notably Colorado Springs resident Everett Uchiyama, the former USA Swimming national team director accused of baiting a teenage swimmer into a sexual relationship.
“I would like to hear from Mr. Wielgus,” said Robert Allard, representing a 15-year-old California girl whose former coach got 40 years in prison in January for sexually abusing his swimmers. “How many of these coaches did you report to the authorities?”
Allard wants USA Swimming to “ensure that (the banned coaches) never have access to children again. That is the main goal here – to protect these young children. And I don’t see that USA Swimming has done a very good job of that over the past several years.”
For more Olympic coverage, visit www.gazette.com/olympics. Check out our Olympics blog at http://gazetteolympics.freedomblogging.com.
