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Five-time Olympian Dara Torres reported to USA Swimming seeing U.S. national team head coach Sean Hutchison leave world-record setting Team USA swimmer Ariana Kukors’ hotel room at night during a training camp prior to the 2009 World Championships, according to a recent sworn statement obtained by the Southern California News Group.
The statement contradicts an account of Torres’ reporting of the incident that Susan Woessner, then USA Swimming director for safe sport, provided to attorneys for USA Swimming in January 2011 in the midst of a USA Swimming investigation that cleared Hutchison of sexual misconduct involving Kukors.
Despite Torres’ report prior to the 2009 Worlds, Hutchison a few weeks later was given one of the most coveted jobs within American swimming: coaching a USA Swimming-funded elite, post-graduate training group, one of the organization’s Centers of Excellence, based at the Fullerton Aquatics Sports Team at the Janet Evans Swim Complex.
Hutchison after the Torres report was also named to the Team USA coaching staff for the 2010 Pan Pacific Championships.
Hutchison was banned from the sport for life in October after the U.S. Center for Safe Sport found that he engaged in sexual misconduct in a case involving Kukors, now Kukors Smith, when she was a minor. The Safe Sport investigation found that Hutchison molested Kukors Smith, had her perform oral sex on him and took nude photos of her while she was a minor, according to a Safe Sport findings and recommendation report.
Hutchison is currently under investigation by the Department of Homeland Security. Homeland Security along with local law enforcement conducted a search of Hutchison’s apartment just south of Seattle in February. Officers seized computers and cell phones, according to persons familiar with the investigation.
Law enforcement agencies also conducted searches of warehouses connected to Hutchison and his businesses in California and Florida. Hutchison has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing since Kukors Smith first went public in February.
“We thought that we had seen it all with the sordid nature of how USA Swimming has conducted its affairs, but this really takes the cake,” Robert Allard, Kukors Smith’s attorney, said. “It is astounding to think that critical evidence provided by an Olympic legend was literally fabricated in order to calm a media storm that was rising at the time involving its cherished coach Sean Hutchison. Instead of stopping a serial predator and child molester in the face of overwhelming incriminating information, therefore, Ariana was unconscionably subjected to several more years of sexual abuse. We can only hope that Congress continues to keep a close eye on this saga and takes affirmative steps to ensure that this organization has good people placed in leadership positions who will not hesitate to place the welfare and safety of its athletes well above its precious image and reputation.”
Torres, a 12-time Olympic medalist, said in the sworn statement she witnessed Hutchison leaving Kukors’ room at the Hotel Atilius, a northern Italy resort walking distance from the Adriatic Sea that was USA Swimming’s training camp site in July 2009 prior to the World Championships in Rome. Kukors at the time had just turned 20. Hutchison, her longtime coach at King Aquatics near Seattle, was 39.
“One night I personally saw Coach Hutchison leave the hotel room where Ariana was staying,” Torres said in a recent sworn statement in Kukors Smith’s lawsuit against Hutchison, USA Swimming and former USA Swimming national team director Mark Schubert.
Sexual relationships between coaches and athletes are banned by USA Swimming’s code of conduct. The code also requires any person with knowledge of such a violation to report it.
“Prior to this time, the relationship between Coach Hutchison and Ariana was the subject of rumors by various USA Swimming team members,” Torres continued in the statement. “Simply states, there was suspicion that the two were engaged in something beyond the normal coach/athlete relationship. When I saw Coach Hutchison leave Ariana’s room, I was concerned, considering Ariana’s age, and reported what I saw to someone at USA Swimming. I was informed that they would take care of it.
“I believe I spoke to others at USA Swimming or their representatives thereafter and would have related the same information as stated above.”
Torres’ account is supported by a sworn statement in recent days by Evan Morgenstein, her agent from 2009 to 2011.
“While at the (World) championships, Ms. Torres informed me that she witnessed Sean Hutchison leaving the hotel room where Ariana Kukors was staying and that she reported this incident to a representative of USA Swimming,” Morgenstein said in the sworn statement.
Torres told the SCNG in June that she told Schubert about the incident during the pre-Worlds training camp.
“I did say something because it was so wrong,” Torres said. “Here’s this young girl, it just seemed odd. I said something to Mark, and somebody from USA Swimming said they’d take care of it.”
Kukors Smith told the SCNG that Schubert was aware of Hutchison’s misconduct during the pre-Worlds training camp and spoke to Hutchison about the hotel incident “in real time.”
“Sean told me that Schubert had told him that one of the swimmers had said that they saw us sneaking around to each other’s rooms. Sean was the head coach of the women’s team at this meet, so obviously had a lot of power, and my understanding was Schubert told Sean to be careful,” Kukors Smith said. “Sean passed along the message to me that we needed to be more secretive and watch our backs. I did not want to get in trouble, so I complied. We referred back to that instance often when Sean would remind me of the need for secrecy.”
But Hutchison was hired by USA Swimming shortly after the 2009 Worlds to run an elite training group made up of Olympic and Worlds medalists and prospective Olympians at FAST. It would be another year before USA Swimming investigated Hutchison’s involvement with Kukors.
Hutchison resigned from his position at FAST in December 2010 after FAST coach Bill Jewell confronted him about his relationship with Kukors. Jewell in September 2010 hired a private investigative firm that employed Schubert’s wife to follow Kukors and Hutchison. The private investigator determined that on Oct. 1, 2010 Kukors spent the night at Hutchison’s Orange County residence.
Hutchison was cleared of any wrongdoing by a USA Swimming investigation completed in February 2011.Woessner oversaw the USA Swimming investigation. Woessner interviewed Torres in January 2011 as part of the Hutchison investigation. Woessner said Torres gave a different account in the 2011 interview, according to a series of emails obtained by the SCNG.
“I introduced myself and let her know that USA Swimming was investigating these rumors currently in the media about Sean Hutchison and that in the course of that investigation, it had been reported that during World Champs in Rome in 2009, she had observed Sean leaving Ariana Kukors’ room,” Woessner wrote in a Jan. 5, 2011 email to Richard Young, Onye Ikwaukor and Jennifer Bielak, attorneys for Holme Roberts & Owen, the Colorado Springs law firm that represented USA Swimming and the U.S. Olympic Committee.
“After observing that, she spoke with him and gave him some advice about the situation. Dara reported the following information: She did not ever witness Sean leaving Ariana Kukors’ room during World Champs in Rome,” Woessner continued in the email. “She served as team captain on that trip and at some point, “some of the younger girls on the team” mentioned to her that Sean and Ari were spending a lot of time together and she heard that he left her room at some point. She sat him down (‘I know that sounds weird, but I’m older than him’), explained that during the course of her career she ‘has been the brunt of many rumors, some of them true.’ She told him ‘this is what is being said’ and advised him just to stay at an arm’s length for the rest of the trip. Dara said that Sean reacted very surprised by the information and that she noticed that he did keep his distance from that point of the trip.”
Woessner was forced to resign earlier this year because of conflicts of interest stemming from the Hutchison investigation. Woessner acknowledged that she failed to disclose prior to or during the investigation that she had been physically involved with Hutchison dating to 2007.
“Considering Woessner’s Safe Sport role, a disclosure of this interaction should have preceded an investigation involving Hutchison in December 2010,” USA Swimming said in a statement at the time.
Woessner’s removal also followed an SCNG investigation that found that Woessner, former USA Swimming executive director Chuck Wielgus and other top USA Swimming officials, board members and coaches were aware of sexually predatory coaches for years, in some cases even decades, but did not take action against them. In at least 11 cases either Wielgus or Woessner declined to pursue sexual abuse cases against high profile coaches even when presented with direct complaints, documents show.
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