A former national team swimcoach has banned for life for abusing a world champion when she was a child.
The US Center for Safe Sport has banned former US Olympic and USA Swimming national team coach Sean Hutchison from the sport after finding he engaged in sexual misconduct against champion swimmer Ariana Kukors Smith when she was a minor. Hutchison molested Kukors Smith, 28, had her perform oral sex on him and took nude photos of her when she was still a minor, according to a Safe Sport report seen by the Orange County Register.
The investigation found that Hutchison began grooming Kukors Smith when she was 15 and 16 with 'sexualized' communications that included requests to take nude photos of her and 'asking if she was wearing underwear,' the report said. Kukors Smith alleges that Hutchison, initially her coach at a Seattle-area club, began grooming her for a sexual relationship when she was 13.
The report found he sexually assaulted her at 16 and continued to have a sexual relationship with her and exert control over almost every aspect of her daily life until she was 24. Kukors Smith, the 2009 World 200-meter individual medley gold medalist, has filed a civil suit in Orange County Superior Court against Hutchison, USA Swimming, and former US national team director Mark Schubert. The case is also against King Aquatic Club, Hutchison’s Seattle-area club, and Aquatic Management Group Inc, a company owned by Hutchison.
The suit alleges top USA Swimming officials and coaches and others in the swimming community ignored and covered up Hutchison’s alleged sexual abuse. Hutchison is currently under investigation by the Department of Homeland Security, along with local law enforcement conducted 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 conduced 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 with her allegations in February. Safe Sport found that Hutchison molested her at an August 2006 meet and again at both a California meet and the 2006 Pan Pacific Championships in British Columbia, one of the biggest swim meets in the world outside the Olympic Games and World Championships.
It is also reported that Hutchison had sexual intercourse with Kukors Smith shortly after her 18th birthday while he was still her coach. Kukors Smith first swam for Hutchison at KING Aquatics just outside Seattle as a teenager. The Safe Sport ruling is the latest step in the fall from grace for Hutchison, who less than a decade ago was considered American swimming’s brightest rising coaching star. Hutchison was an assistant coach on the 2008 U.S.
Olympic team after turning KING into a world class swim club. A year later he was named Team USA head coach for the World Championships in Rome where Kukors Smith twice lowered the 200 IM world record. Later in 2009 he was named coach of an elite US national team training group in conjunction with the Fullerton Aquatics Sports Team that worked out at the Janet Evans Swim Complex. The group was one of three U.S. Olympic Committee Professional and Post-Graduate Training Groups.
Kukors Smith swam one year at the University of Washington before joining Hutchison at FAST. The Safe Sport ruling comes seven months after Susan Woessner, USA Swimming’s director of Safe Sport, was forced out amid allegations she had a conflict of interest when she was involved with a sexual abuse investigation of Hutchison because of an alleged 'intimately personal relationship' with the coach.
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