Sarah Ehekircher has reached a settlement with USA Swimming, Scott MacFarland, Colorado Swimming and the Mission Aurora Colorado Swim Team (MACS), her attorney Jon Little confirmed to SwimSwam on Wednesday.
Ehekircher alleged that MacFarland sexually abused her when he was her coach in the 1980s and the other parties “actively abused and/or failed to act to protect Sarah.”
The lawsuit was initially filed in California in 2020, but in late 2022, the suit was filed in Colorado, with USA Swimming, MacFarland, Colorado Swimming, MACS and the Cherry Creek School District listed as defendants. The Cherry Crook School District was later dropped as a defendant in the case.
Specific information about the settlement terms, including dollar amount, is confidential, Little said, though he believes the outcome is one Ehekircher can make peace with and everyone can move on from.
Little said that back in the 1980s, the sexual abuse from male coaches on their swimmers was so rampant that USA Swimming was unable to buy insurance on it. He lamented the fact that swim coaching has historically been such a male-dominated profession in the country, noting that the U.S. has only had one female head coach on its Olympic swimming staff, and that promoting female coaching would go a long way in preventing athlete abuse from being such a common occurrence.
“If there are six coaching spots on the U.S. Olympic team, five of them should be women,” he said.
In the suit, Ehekircher asserted that USA Swimming and Colorado Swimming’s culture enabled “her sexual abuse and those of other young athletes” and their failure to take action “allowed the inappropriate relationship to commence and continue with knowledge among those in USA Swimming and Colorado Swimming social circles.”
The lawsuit also said that USA Swimming has “allegedly sought to discredit her and stymied her efforts to shed light on the truth by providing inaccurate information to law enforcement and withholding evidence of meet results and transcripts from her and the US Center for Safe Sport.”
“The abuse and USA Swimming’s actions or inactions have allegedly caused Plaintiff ‘extreme emotional distress,’ which has led to three suicide attempts and hospitalization for depression,” the suit said.
Last year, the defendants filed motions to dismiss four of the five claims raised against them, but were denied three of them.
The one claim that was dismissed, Negligent infliction of emotional distress (NIED), was lumped into another claim, Intentional infliction of emotional distress (IIED), because in California law, there aren’t independent torts for negligence.
Little confirmed that all claims have been settled.
CASE BACKGROUND
MacFarland coached Ehekircher while she was swimming for the Mission Viejo Conquistadores, a Colorado-based club that has since been renamed the Mission Aurora Colorado Swim Team.
According to the suit, MacFarland was recruited by Mark Schubert, the coach of the Mission Viejo Nadadores in California, to coach the Colorado extension of the program.
Ehekircher’s mother died when she was 13, and the suit says that her alcoholic father kicked her out of the house while she was still a minor. She then moved in with MacFarland while she was a minor with the full knowledge of the Cherry Creek School District, the suit alleges.
MacFarland allegedly raped Ehekircher for the first time in the summer of 1986 at a swim meet in Irvine, California, when she was 17. The age of consent in California was and still is 18.
Ehekircher claims the two had sex multiple times in various states in the summer of 1986, prior to her 18th birthday.
The suit alleges that Cherry Creek Schools were aware that Ehekircher was living with MacFarland while she was a student at Smoky Hill High School in Aurora and “took no steps to verify if Scott MacFarland was indeed Sarah’s guardian.”
“In reality, Coach MacFarland was not Sarah’s ‘guardian,’ he was her rapist and abuser,” the suit said.
In 2018, Ehekircher came forward with claims that MacFarland sexually abused her when she was a teenager. She said the relationship turned sexual when she was 17 and he was 34 while the two were on a trip to a swim meet in Irvine. Ehekircher said the sexual relationship continued, and that MacFarland impregnated her twice, both ending in abortions. She left the swim team at the University of Arkansas after the first abortion.
Ehekircher also filed a complaint against MacFarland in 2010, but USA Swimming’s national board of review process didn’t take action against MacFarland. When Ehekircher went public with her claims in 2018, MacFarland was still coaching the Magnolia Aquatic Club in Texas, though he retired from coaching after her claims were widely reported.
