A former Meriden, Conn., high school swim coach who was charged with voyeurism in February 2023 has had his case dismissed.
Daniel Barillaro Jr., now 25, turned himself in two and a half years ago after Meriden police issued a warrant for his arrest. He was charged with voyeurism with malice after a 16-year-old female student at O.H. Platt High School, where Barillaro Jr. was working as an assistant swim coach, said he recorded her with his cell phone inside the school bathroom.
On August 21, 2025, Barillaro Jr.’s case was dismissed, as first reported by The CT Insider, according to a judicial notification system.
The Meriden Superior Court told SwimSwam the case had been statutorily sealed and further information was not available.
Officials said Barillaro Jr. was removed from his coaching position at Platt High School and was no longer employed with the school system after the incident.
In Connecticut, a voyeurism offense is a class A misdemeanor, punishable by a prison term of up to one year, a fine of up to $2,000, or both.
Barillaro Jr.’s charge came on February 3, 2023, nearly one month after the incident took place.
According to a Meriden police report, he asked the 16-year-old girl to attend an all-boys’ practice on January 5, 2023, for extra work, and she agreed.
The girls’ locker room was then locked when she attended the practice, so she had to change in the gym teacher’s bathroom. Before going in, Barillaro Jr. cut her off and asked if he could use the bathroom before her.
Once she was in the bathroom, she noticed a cell phone and a wallet on a towel rack. Upon further examination, she realized the phone was recording her.
The student then pressed the stop button on the camera before leaving the changing area.
When police spoke to Barillaro Jr., he admitted to recording the student but said it was an accident. Police said he gave contradicting stories about what happened after the recording, with him saying he both deleted the video and then that he had no knowledge of the video.
And because the case is dismissed, Safe Sport has zero to say about him coaching again.
Safe sport does not protect athletes, always remember that.
The devil is always in the details. There should be transparency about why it was dismissed. I understand the desire to protect victims and the wrongly accused, but I think that closing a case without any semblance of public explanation does a disservice to literally everyone involved.
The biggest thank you goes to Swim Swam, by posting this article, and ones like it, you do more to protect athletes from predators than Safe Sport ever has.
The dismissal was done by a prosecutor in CT not Safesport.
Safe sport, if they cared about athletes at all, would at a minimum forward Public Information. It is public information that this guy was charged with electronic voyeurism of a minor and note the case was dismissed. Even the smallest of heads up ensure he doesn’t have access to do it again.
I have been screaming about this hole in the fence for YEARS to Safe Sport and USA Swimming. They simply do not care.
Eventually, a coach will do something particularly egregious, and we will find out they had a series of red flag offenses (charges plead down or dismissed, continuances without finding, etc.) that should have kept them off deck. USA Swimming and Safe Sport will be held liable for ignoring the red flags, and only THEN we will see some reform.
Weren’t they already the ones that buried the gymnastics doctor Nasaar in “investigations” that didn’t go anywhere?
Yes! People forget this because Safe Sport is very disingenuous of their history, claiming they were formed in 2017 as a result of the Nassar scandal. It was actually formed as a USOPC initiative in 2013, did nothing about him for years, and then got a bigger budget courtesy of Congress for their efforts.
Unbelievable.
Pretty sus. Like you couldn’t unlock the locker room, and why is there lock going from the pool deck INTO the locker rooms?
but it still got dismissed?! damn that’s either some solid skeevy lawyering or idk, something scarier.
Probably not worth the man hours. Over worked government prosecutors will focus on the cases that will result in jail time. A defender with a lawyer willing to drag it out can often avoid prosecution. As maddening as it is, electronic voyeurism even if a minor is unlikely to result in any real jail time. This is why those catch a predator shows always try to get the creep to show up in person, hopefully with something that looks like a plan (condoms, a hotel room, etc). They need those elements to press a “real” charge.
Dismissed?!?!?!?! What on earth….