Catalog

Record Details

Catalog Search



Underwater : the greed-soaked tale of sexual abuse in USA swimming and around the globe  Cover Image Book Book

Underwater : the greed-soaked tale of sexual abuse in USA swimming and around the globe / Irvin Muchnick.

Muchnick, Irvin, (author.).

Summary:

"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."-- Provided by publisher.

Record details

  • ISBN: 9781770417755 (trade paperback)
  • Physical Description: x, 261 pages : illustrations ; 22 cm
  • Publisher: Toronto, ON : ECW Press, [2024]
Subject: Child molesters.
Child sexual abuse.
Swimmers > Abuse of.
Swimmers > Crimes against.
Swimming coaches.
Swimming > Corrupt practices.
Genre: True crime stories.

Available copies

  • 1 of 1 copy available at Tsuga Consortium.

Holds

  • 0 current holds with 1 total copy.
Show Only Available Copies
Location Call Number / Copy Notes Barcode Shelving Location Status Due Date
Cookstown Branch 364.153 Muc 31681010389344 NONFICPBK Available -

  • Bookmasters
    Backed by hundreds of interviews and thousands of pages of USA Swimming files subpoenaed by the FBI, Irvin Muchnick uncovers a generation of cover-ups involving some of the sport's biggest names.
  • Bookmasters

    Sales and Market Bullets

  • RIGHTS DEALS:
    • Audiobook rights licensed to Spotify
  • HUGE REACH: USA Swimming has 400,000 members. This means nearly half a million American families have a kid in a USA Swimming program. Parents will want to be informed of the program’s abuse and cover-ups. Nothing will change in the sport without purposeful congressional action, but parents must spur that action forward.
  • SCANDAL AND LAWSUITS: Muchnick defended multiple lawsuits while researching this book and was undefeated as a plaintiff in public information litigation at local and national levels. In his Freedom of Information Act case against the Department of Homeland Security for records from the immigration file of Ireland’s George Gibney, Judge Breyer called Irvin Muchnick “an accomplished journalist [who] suspects that the American Swimming Coaches Association greased the wheels for Gibney’s relocation.”
  • INFLUENTIAL AUTHOR: Muchnick’s 2003 Los Angeles Times article, “Welcome to Plantation Football,” helped spur the contemporary movement to compensate college athletes.
  • IN THE NEWS: As this book headed to press, there were renewed efforts to extradite from the U.S. for trial in Ireland coach George Gibney, whom the author calls “the most notorious at-large sex criminal in sports history.”
  • Simon and Schuster
    “Horrifying stuff that we desperately need to know.” — Scott Ostler, sports columnist, San Francisco Chronicle

    Backed by hundreds of interviews and thousands of pages of USA Swimming files subpoenaed by the FBI, Irvin Muchnick uncovers a generation of cover-ups involving some of the sport’s biggest names

    The hundreds of millions who watch the thrilling spectacle of the Olympics are unaware of the extent to which their entertainment is undergirded by the systematic abuse by coaches of the underage athletes they develop. Many flag-waving fans gained some sense of the problem from the USA Gymnastics scandals, but for generations, the crimes in swimming have caused a much wider tsunami of pain and trauma around the world.

    Backed by thousands of pages of FBI files and the author’s independent investigations, Underwater is the first comprehensive account of this ongoing and unacceptable phenomenon. Irvin Muchnick, a well-known chronicler of the dark side of sports, pulls together shocking stories involving some of the most iconic coaches in swimming history and some of the sport’s most celebrated programs — including Michael Phelps’s. The book lays the blame not just at the feet of individual villains but also at a system that casually commodifies and sexualizes the vulnerable and non-consenting, prioritizing the pursuit of athletic scholarships, Olympic medals, glory, and riches.

    Underwater arrives just as a congressional commission has called for the first fundamental changes in the U.S. youth sports system in half a century. In the author’s estimation, this reform is the only real way to protect kids from the predation of the money-first stewards of professionalized sports.

Additional Resources