Silent Currents: Inside the Scandal That Rocked Paralympic Swimming
More than two years ago, Paralympic swimming champion Robert Griswold was accused of sexually abusing a teammate with an intellectual disability. After Colorado Springs police chose not to pursue criminal charges against Griswold last year, will Parker Egbert and his family ever get the justice they seek?
Silent Currents: Inside the Scandal That Rocked Paralympic Swimming
The Investigation
It’s now been more than two years since Parker Egbert reported to authorities that he was sexually assaulted. The Tokyo Paralympic swimmer was diagnosed with injuries that matched his disturbing allegations against Robert Griswold, who has a history of predatory behavior. So why was Griswold never arrested by Colorado Springs police?
Back in November of 2023, lawyers for the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee sounded the alarm when I published a redacted copy of the Colorado Springs police report. They accused Parker Egberts’ family and lawyers of leaking the document to me, demanding everyone involved release their personal communications with the press.
The only thing was, no leak had taken place. In reality, I got the police report via public records request from the Colorado Springs police themselves. The 70-page document shed light on how they handled their criminal investigation, why they decided not to pursue charges against Griswold, and what they may have missed along the way.
It’s now been more than two years since Parker Egbert reported to authorities that he was sexually assaulted. The Tokyo Paralympic swimmer was diagnosed with injuries that matched his allegations against Robert Griswold, who has a history of predatory behavior. So why was Griswold never arrested by Colorado Springs police?
Welcome back to Silent Currents: Inside the Scandal that Rocked Paralympic Swimming. Episode two: The Investigation.
In November of 2023, lawyers for the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee sounded the alarm when I published a redacted copy of the Colorado Springs police report. They accused Parker Egberts’ family and lawyers of leaking the document to me, demanding everyone involved release their personal communications with the press.
The only thing was, no leak had taken place. I actually got the police report via public records request from the Colorado Springs police themselves. The 70-page document shed light on how they handled their criminal investigation, why they decided not to pursue charges against Griswold, and what they may have missed along the way.
The Colorado Springs Police Department — CSPD for short — said Parker’s sexual assaults were first reported on August 24, three days after both the Egbert family and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee claim they called the police.
The lead detective assigned to the case was CSPD sergeant Dedra Worley, a former resident athlete at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs who competed at the Atlanta 1996 Olympics as a judo alternate. A CSPD spokesperson told me last year that they do not believe there is any conflict of interest with Det. Worley leading the investigation despite her past connections to the USOPC.
Worley took more than two months to reach out to Griswold, who pleaded the fifth through his attorneys. It wasn’t until January of 2023 — almost five months later — that Det. Worley contacted a critical witness, nurse practitioner Sara Hubbell. Hubbell said Parker’s diagnosis of anal fissure could have only been caused by either penetration or chronic constipation, and the Egbert family says Parker has no history of chronic constipation. Hubbell had seen a lot of people who have been assaulted, and her gut feeling told her that Parker seemed very genuine and truthful. Parker’s therapists have also attested to the fact that, because of his intellectual disability, he couldn’t fabricate this kind of story.
By the time Det. Worley arrived at the Training Center in October of 2022 to examine the room that Griswold had shared with Parker for seven months, USOPC employees had already repainted the residence and repaired several scuff marks allegedly left by Griswold punching and kicking the walls.
Exactly a month after experiencing his last reported sexual assault in Colorado Springs, Parker participated in a forensic interview in September of 2022 while recovering from severe rectal pain in Iowa. The interviewer tried to make Parker feel at ease by allowing him to remove his mask, letting him have a stuffed animal with him, and providing snacks in the room. Parker was asked about his hobbies, and he said he liked to draw pictures, write stories, and go to Disneyland with his sister.
Then Parker was asked what brought him in to talk to her today. He recalled how he was cleaning himself in his own shower stall at the Training Center when Griswold came in and stuck his “private part” in his butt. He said Griswold would call him stupid and a liar to everyone. Parker also mentioned being assaulted by Griswold at the Tokyo Paralympics in 2021.
Parker added that Griswold would grab him by the shoulders and shake him when angry, force him to use his credit card to buy him things when they went shopping together, and hide snacks from Parker after hard practices. He said felt like he was “starving to death,” while Griswold told coaches that Parker had eaten 13 cookies. Parker ended the interview by saying no one else has touched him inappropriately — just Griswold.
In November of 2022, Det. Worley enlisted the help of Detective Robert Wachs to investigate a potential witness, Lawrence Sapp, who may have witnessed Griswold abusing Parker when the three swimmers shared housing at the Tokyo Paralympics. Like Parker, Sapp has an intellectual impairment, so Det. Wachs set up an interview with his mom, Dee, on November 14th.
But according to the police report, Det. Wachs appears to have missed work that day due to illness and never rescheduled his interview with Dee. A couple months later, Det. Worley declared that “no other interviews related to Japan will be completed as they are out of the jurisdiction and scope of this investigation.” Det. Wachs later became the subject of an internal CSPD investigation last fall for alleged felony theft of city resources.
In late 2022, Det. Worley received a pair of tips from U.S. Center for SafeSport investigator Matthew Richardson. One incident report noted how a mother was concerned that her son may have been groomed by Griswold. Another included information on how someone else may have been held down and kissed by Griswold. Det. Worley did not attempt to contact the mother because “she does not consider her son a victim.” Det. Worley also did not attempt to contact the other potential victim because “she is not considered a victim in this case or otherwise self-reported to Colorado Springs Police Department.” That same logic seems to have been extended to Paralympic swimming champion Anastasia Pagonis, who was never interviewed by CSPD despite reporting a previous sexual assault by Griswold in September of 2020.
In February of 2023, U.S. Paralympic Swimming director Erin Popovich was reinstated after an internal investigation cleared her of wrongdoing related to Griswold. During an interview with CSPD the following week, Popovich told Det. Worley that she had no other knowledge of any unwanted touching or sexual advances by Griswold outside of the incident with Pagonis. When it came time for Griswold to return to the Training Center from his first SafeSport suspension in the spring of 2021, Popovich said a group of female athletes shared that they thought he was weird, but did not reveal any other information. However, it appears that Popovich knew more than she told police at the time.
According to the Egberts’ civil lawsuit, Pagonis told USOPC officials that Griswold sent sexually inappropriate text messages to at least one other athlete. In May of 2021, the lawsuit claims that a group of athletes reported to the USOPC that Griswold’s impending return from suspension made them feel exceedingly uncomfortable. About a week later, that same group asked the USOPC to ban Griswold from workout sessions and opposed his re-entry into the Training Center. According to the lawsuit, Popovich called the reports “BS,” and the USOPC never passed them along to SafeSport.
Det. Worley reviewed a report from former U.S. Paralympic Swimming head coach Nathan Manley where he received a message that there may be other victims, but she was “unable to open attachment,” according to the police report. There was no follow-up in the report and Worley never appears to have interviewed Manley, even though he had way more day-to-day interaction with Parker and Griswold compared to Popovich. In her interview with Det. Worley, Popovich distanced herself from the situation by saying she was at the Training Center “only once or twice per month unless Manley was away,” and that she “did not have a lot of day-to-day interaction at the Training Center.”
Later in February of 2023, Det. Worley recommended that the case status be changed to “inactive” until new evidence is presented. She wrote that “no arrest will be made at this time because of the lack of witnesses and there is not enough corroborating evidence presented to meet the standard of probable cause” — even though the CSPD never appears to have interviewed Anastasia Pagonis, Dee Sapp, or head coach Nathan Manley. In April of 2023, Det. Worley submitted the case to deputy district attorney Kelson Castain for formal review of filing charges. More than a year later, Griswold still has not been arrested.
The outcome of Griswold’s criminal investigation is all too common in cases of sexual abuse against people with developmental disabilities. Researchers have found that more than 90% of individuals with intellectual disabilities will experience some form of sexual abuse in their lives, and half of them will suffer it more than 10 times. According to a Boston Globe study, just 5% of serious crimes against people with disabilities were prosecuted, compared to 70% for people without disabilities — despite the fact that those with intellectual impairment are sexually assaulted at more than seven times the rate of people without disabilities, based on Justice Department data from 2018.
One of the best ways to combat sexual assault against those with developmental disabilities is through education about what healthy relationships look like and what constitutes abuse. Often, though, people with intellectual disabilities are denied sex education opportunities because they are infantilized.
In an interview with the CSPD, Parker’s dad, Aaron Egbert, said that he believed Parker did not yet know about sex and consent. Aaron added that they hadn’t had that conversation, and that he didn’t think Parker would fully understand or consent to sexual activities.
Aaron also said he was upset with himself for being too trusting when Griswold had been portrayed like a good guy. He recalled how when Parker came home to Iowa in August of 2022, he asked Aaron to sleep outside his bedroom door because he thought Griswold was coming to get him.
Griswold’s history of predatory behavior may have started before he allegedly grabbed blind swimmer Anastasia Pagonis’s butt and texted her, “I just wanna fuck,” when she was just 16 years old. The police report also references an associated case from January of 2020, when a sports psychologist based out of Denver consulted with an anonymous athlete who had knowledge of a sexual assault, but it’s heavily redacted. The anonymous athlete said she was with [redacted] and [redacted] in [redacted]’s dorm room at the Olympic Training Center when [redacted] grabbed [redacted] by the genitals. No arrest was made.
Whereas the CSPD’s criminal investigation lasted six months, SafeSport’s investigation is still ongoing more than two years later. The Denver-based watchdog has been overwhelmed with hundreds of new complaints each week on top of more than 1,000 open cases — a quarter of which were more than a year old as of last summer. Fewer than 15% of SafeSport investigations have resulted in formal resolutions, while almost 38% were administratively closed with no findings, sanctions, or even allegations released. The organization was created in 2017 following the Larry Nassar scandal within USA Gymnastics with an aim to address abuse in Olympic sports. However, there are doubts about whether SafeSport can be objective while receiving $20 million of its $23 million annual budget from the USOPC — the same people they’re supposed to be investigating.
What’s even more troubling, ESPN and ABC News obtained confidential documents in 2022 that showed how the USOPC raises part of its $20 million annual contribution from individual sports federations, which pay fees based on the number of allegations reported and the amount of work required to resolve them.
A proposed bill in the Senate is calling for public funding of SafeSport among a series of reforms within the Olympic and Paralympic movement. During a Congressional hearing in March, SafeSport CEO Ju’Riese Colon claimed that national governing bodies are not disincentivized from reporting misconduct. It only took a few minutes for the record to be set straight by Mana Shim, a former NWSL soccer player and current chair of the U.S. Soccer Federation Participant Safety Task Force.
The Egberts initially sued SafeSport along with the USOPC and Griswold in their civil lawsuit, but SafeSport was ultimately dropped as a defendant due to the organization’s legal immunity from eligibility decisions.
The Egberts’ lawyers told me last year that they believe SafeSport’s immunity is highly problematic and should be the subject of inquiry and reconsideration from lawmakers.
Remember those USOPC lawyers from earlier, who accused the Egberts and their attorneys of leaking the police report to me after I obtained it from the CSPD via records request? They’re now facing potential sanctions for failing to disclose several of the USOPC’s insurance policies that add another $9 million to the initial $1 million liability limit. Attorneys for the Egberts say that if they had known the USOPC had $10 million in insurance coverage, they would not have reduced their settlement demand so drastically from $100 million to $9.9 million.
In episode three, we’ll take a deep dive into the civil lawsuit, exploring what new evidence was uncovered in recent court filings and why an attempt at mediation fell through this summer.