Sarah Burt is dead.
An outstanding student and competitive swimmer who became a lifeguard and loved teaching children to swim, her private anguish became too much to bear. So after finally telling her parents of the sexual abuse she suffered at the hands of her United States Swimming coach, she made a decision. On June 29, 2010 Burt drove her car to a busy intersection in rural Illinois, 20 minutes from Peoria. She parked, got out, and ended her years of torment when she walked into traffic and was hit by a semi-truck. She was 16 years old.
The same year of Burt's death, Andy King, a San Jose swimming coach, was sentenced to 40 years in prison after authorities uncovered a pattern of sexual abuse that lasted three
decades and involved more than a dozen young on the West Coast.
USA Swimming in 2008 had proudly accepted King into its ranks, stating in an acceptance letter, “Congratulations. Your background screening has been thoroughly reviewed and meets the qualification standards set by USA Swimming.” According to
USA Swimming, the organization at the time checked only for criminal convictions and didn’t include background interviews or investigations with local police.
In September 2011, “Jane Doe,” a King victim in San Jose settled her case against USA Swimming. The terms are confidential. Currently there are three pending cases against USA Swimming – Jancy Thompson v. USA Swimming in San Jose, Calif.; and Taflinger v. USA Swimming and Weiss v. USA Swimming, both in Indiana.
There will likely be more lawsuits in the days to come. Just last week the Washington Post published a story about the Washington, DC-area swim coaching legend Richard Curl and his sexual contact with a former swimmer, just 13 years old at the time.
And there are continue to be new cases of sexual abuse by swim coaches around the country, as evidenced by coaches charged with such crimes in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, Orange County, California, and Malvern, Pennsylvania.