Latest sex abuse scandal shows U.S. Olympic sports have much work to do

Last week, renowned U.S. Olympic coach Richard Callaghan was suspended by U.S. Figure Skating after decades-old allegations of inappropriate sexual misconduct were brought to the attention of the U.S. Center for SafeSport by Callaghan’s alleged victim, Olympic coach Craig Maurizi.

But, in a glaring failure of the U.S. Olympic movement's new SafeSport initiative, the suspension does not prevent Callaghan from entering almost any rink in the country, skating on public sessions or interacting with young skaters.

“I’m the director of a major figure skating training center that has hundreds to thousands of young skaters coming through the door every day, and I could, if I wanted to, hire this man today,” Maurizi, 55, director of figure skating for the Ice House in Hackensack, N.J., said in a phone interview Wednesday.

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“Of course there’s no way I’d do that, but if I or any other rink wanted to do it, there would be nothing that USFS or SafeSport could say about it, and that’s disturbing. That really bothers me. That’s way, way wrong.”

Maurizi, who started taking skating lessons from Callaghan in Buffalo in 1976, said that Callaghan engaged in inappropriate sexual conduct with him when Maurizi was 13, and later initiated a full sexual relationship with Maurizi when he was 18. That relationship continued until he was 22, after which time Callaghan continued to engage in inappropriate sexual conduct sporadically for another 12 years, Maurizi said.

On Jan. 31, Maurizi detailed these allegations in a report he filed with SafeSport, which suspended Callaghan March 6. USFS then suspended him as well.

Callaghan, 72, who coached Tara Lipinski to the Olympic gold medal in 1998 and is best known for coaching six-time national champion and three-time U.S. Olympian Todd Eldredge, has repeatedly denied the allegations, which first came to light in news media reports in 1999. He did not return a request for comment left on his voicemail last week, nor another Wednesday afternoon.

Maurizi said he was pleased with the suspension, but is concerned that it doesn’t reach far enough.

“I’m very happy and thankful to SafeSport for doing their part and to USFS for getting them involved,” he said. “That’s all good stuff, but it does seem to literally just scratch the surface. They can’t stop a rink owner from hiring him even now. My daughters are in school and we get a blast phone call about snow days. How is there not some sort of email blast about this, an Amber alert kind of thing, for example?”

USFS did send out an email alert last Wednesday to about two dozen skating club officials and SafeSport chairs in Southwest Florida, where Callaghan last coached, USFS spokeswoman Barbara Reichert said.

Maurizi’s concerns highlight the inherent weaknesses in a system that has been touted by the USOC as the answer to the terrible sex abuse scandals that have enveloped USA Gymnastics and USA Swimming. But the landscape of Olympic sports training sites might as well be the wild west, a patchwork of sole proprietors and independent contractors who won’t necessarily pay attention to or even know about what organizations like USFS or SafeSport say or do.

USFS said last week that Callaghan was prohibited from participating in activities and competitions organized by the USOC or USFS.

However, Maurizi said, “Competitions accounted for probably 5% of the time I was abused. The times when most of the abuse happened was after lessons, when we were at our home rink, when we were in town. And those are areas that are not covered by the suspension.”

What's more, USFS and SafeSport both did a poor job of getting the news about Callaghan’s suspension out to the people who most need it: skaters and their parents.

Neither USFS nor SafeSport sent out a news release about Callaghan. I found out when Maurizi texted me a screen shot of the suspension buried deep in the USFS website last week.

Even now, a week later, it’s a game of hide and seek to find information about Callaghan’s suspension on both USFS and SafeSport’s websites.

The USFS home page touts “Recent Site Updates,” but there is no mention of Callaghan there, or anywhere on that page. Only by clicking on a logo that reads “ZERO TOLERANCE,” do you go to a SafeSport page with a link for the list of banned and suspended USFS members. Once on that page, you scroll past 19 names of those banned or suspended from USFS membership, including Tonya Harding, to finally reach the name of Richard Callaghan.

The SafeSport website is just as difficult to navigate, requiring you to type in a name to see if that person is suspended or banned. No list of those suspended or banned appears to exist on the site.

After the USA Gymnastics horrors, how can USFS and SafeSport not list Callaghan’s suspension as well as other recent suspensions in a banner headline on the home page of their sites? Why hasn’t the USOC mandated at least that level of transparency for these organizations?

It's all very troubling. As you realize that these organizations seem to be doing everything in their power to prevent important information from reaching the people who need it most, and as you ponder the fact that a suspended skating coach could walk into almost any rink in the country today, this question sadly comes to mind:

What exactly have we learned from the gymnastics and swimming scandals?