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Sexual Abuse In Women's Sports, Part IV: Former Swimmer Debra Denithorne-Grodensky

In part four of our interview series, Debra Denithorne-Grodensky talks with Rob Trucks about her abuse at the hands of the since-convicted Andy King.
All photos via Debra Denithorne-Grodensky

Debra Denithorne-Grodensky finished her competitive swimming career as a scholarship athlete at Arizona State, and she stills holds Chabot Swimming team records in the 200 Free, 500 Free and 200 IM. She was sexually abused by her swim coach, Andy King, over the course of several years in the mid-80s, and King is now serving a 40-year prison sentence for sexual molestation. 

This is part four of VICE Sports' interview series about sexual abuse in sports. 

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Is it possible to put all that time and effort into your swimming career and not daydream about the Olympics at some point? Is that where you hoped you'd end up one day?

That was where I hoped I would end up one day, yeah. I didn't go straight off to college in 1988. I graduated from high school in 1987 and took a year and just went to a community college instead of a four-year college, knowing that it was an Olympic year and hoping to be able to go to the Olympic Trials and compete. And I did poorly that year and was not able to make the qualifying time for Olympic trials. But I did go on to Arizona State and I swam there for a few years and, you know, finished up my college career there. But, yeah, I think it's every athlete's dream, in one way or another, to be able to compete on that level, particularly watching the Olympics and seeing the camaraderie of the athletes and the achievements and the competition. That was always something that inspired me from when I was very, very young. In fact, after I finished swimming I moved to New York City, and I remember the first time I saw the New York City Marathon. Watching people cross that finish line was the closest I was able to come to feeling that sense of competition and achievement. Everybody, whether it was the first person crossing the line or the last person crossing the finish line in the Marathon, they all have the same look on their face, and I recognized that from my swimmer years. I actually started running after that [laughs]. It inspired me to start running, and I actually did complete a New York City Marathon in 1998.

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Are you able to separate swimming and your accomplishments in the sport from your experience with Andy King?

I think now with all the time and the therapy [laughs] . . . I spent a lot of time in therapy, and it's allowed me to recollect the memories without reliving the memories and therefore categorize them for what they are. And separate them, yes, but that took a good 15 to 20 years to be able to do, and a whole lot of therapy to be able to do. So I do look back on my swimming career with many fond memories. And sport, you know, teaches kids at a very young age life lessons that you can carry through into a career. And so I'm extremely grateful to have had the privilege to have traveled all over the United States when I was very young and learn these life lessons early on. But there certainly are feelings that I had to work through over decades of therapy that were very blurred at the time. I blamed swimming, the access that Andy King had to me personally because of the amount of time that is devoted to the sport. I think I blamed that unsupervised time for some of the experiences that I did have with Andy King.

Is there something about the culture of swimming that puts young athletes more at risk than other sports?

I think it's probably more individualized sports. Sport is definitely team oriented, but when it comes to gymnastics or ice-skating or swimming or tae kwon do, it very much is about the individual and how they perform in their event. So I think the culture of the more individualized sports, and swimming, obviously, in particular, at least back in the 80s when I swam, really provided a venue for coaches to take advantage of situations. Back when I swam there weren't a lot of the rules. I come from a family of teachers and my brother, who's a teacher, can't be alone in a classroom with a student. Ever. The door has to be open and there has to be other people around. And that's just not even a consideration in swimming. There's always alone time when you are at swim meets or even after swim practice. There's always time where the coach is alone talking with the swimmer. And if they are behind closed doors . . . In my case, sadly, it was more than talking. So yeah, I think that the culture definitely allowed for a lot of sexual abuse, not just with me but with other people.

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I also think that the times were different, in some regard, in the 80s than they are now. Because, I guess, rumors with my situation started when I was 14, that I was having an affair with my coach. And nowadays, and being a parent, I know that a 14-year-old isn't even capable of having an affair. They aren't capable of consenting to something like that. But in my specific case that was the rumor that was going around. And my coach's contract wasn't renewed because of the affair that he was having with me. The swim team board decided that they didn't want that, so they didn't renew his contract. There were plenty of adults that just viewed it as an affair without ever asking me, "What's going on? Do you need help?" Nobody ever once asked me that. Not one adult. So I think that the culture was different back in the 80s, because sexual abuse was such a taboo subject that it was easier for adults to think that it was a consensual affair rather than accusing somebody of sexual molestation. I think it was just easier back then. Today it's still a taboo subject, but I think that parents are much more aware and understand that there are laws in place for statutory rape and whatnot.

There's always alone time when you are at swim meets or even after swim practice. There's always time where the coach is alone talking with the swimmer. And if they are behind closed doors . . . In my case, sadly, it was more than talking.

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So the culture is better in terms of protecting young people from sexual abuse, but we're not yet where we need to be. Do you have thoughts as to where we need to go from here? Do we need to implement a three-in-a-room rule?

I think that there definitely needs to be rules put in place, not only to protect the athletes but also to protect coaches. There are a whole lot of coaches that have been put into prison and taken out of USA Swimming, but there a lot of good coaches out there, too. You know, really honest, good people. And I don't think that the rules that need to be implemented just go to protect athletes. While that is the focus, of course, I think that they could protect everybody.

I mentioned my brother being a teacher. He's not just keeping his door open and not being alone with a student for the protection of the student. He's protecting himself as well. And I think that carries over to sport, too. And I think it's even more necessary in sport, because there are so many more opportunities for predators to take advantage. Like the amount of traveling that is done for swimming. I was in a hotel two to three weekends out of every month, and I started traveling at the age of 12. There wasn't a single adult other than my swim coach that traveled with the team. Not one. So you're staying in a hotel. You're unsupervised. The grooming process of sexual abuse started for me at the age of 11, and really the grooming process blossomed at ages 12 and 13. And it was afforded because of the five hours a day of no additional adult supervision, just my swim coach and other team members, who were all kids, too.

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So I do think that the rules can not only help protect the athletes, but if there was supervision going on during practices and there was supervision during traveling meets, and even local meets. There were times when my swim coach would drive me to a swim meet that was local, and that afforded him the opportunity between my house and the swim meet. So I definitely think those rules need to be implemented and are a necessity.

1982-1983 San Ramon Valley Seawolves club team photo. Denithorne-Grodensky, middle row, second from the right. Andy King, back row center.

What made you go public with your story when you did? What was the trigger?

I don't think I would have had the strength to trigger it during my swimming career. I mean, obviously I didn't. I didn't say anything the whole time that I swam. And interestingly enough, when we were prosecuting Andy King . . . And I say "we" because there were nine or ten of us that he either attempted sexual abuse or succeeded with, and those were just my immediate teammates in the time frame of 1983 to 1986. And so when we all came back together and were trying to prosecute him, the one common thread, no matter how severe the sexual abuse was, the one common thread that we all agreed on, and we didn't have terminology at the time, but we were saying, "Gosh, it was like we were all brainwashed." And that was really was part of the grooming process. And that went team wide, both the boys and the girls. We all collectively were told over and over again how bad all the other club coaches in the area were. And he would cite different things that each coach would do that would be viewed as poor coaching. So at the end of the day he really had us all believing that there really weren't other local coaches that we could go swim for, effectively, and do better with. And in my personal case, when I started to get to the next level of swimming, when I did start to qualify for larger meets like junior nationals when I was 12 or 13, another thing that he told me in one on one conversations was "If you were to tell anybody what was going on here between us, you wouldn't be able to ever swim for me again and then you wouldn't make the Olympic Trials and you wouldn't get a scholarship for college." So there was a real serious threat hanging above my head that, if I did tell anybody, whether it was a teammate, or an adult, then I wouldn't be able to swim and he wouldn't be able to coach and, you know, really, all would be lost in my small world back then. And so there was a real fear, a true fear of that. And it was not unique. He certainly told his other victims the same thing. He was very clever in putting himself in a position of grandeur, really, and leading me and my teammates to believe that there wasn't anybody else.

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Closure? I don't know if there's ever any kind of closure. Many people have told me, "Oh, you finally have some closure now. It's not something that you have to think about anymore." It's not like that for me, and I don't think it's like that for a lot of victims, because it's made me who I am.

The suspicions, the rumors are strong enough that the swim club decides not to renew his contract.

Yes.

And this is around 1986?

Yes. About 1986.

And yet twenty years later Chuck Wielgus is asked about Andy King and he says that he's never heard of him. Is his inability to protect young swimmers because he has ostrich-like qualities and keeps his head in the sand? Or is it something more active and he's protecting the wrong people?

I can't presume what he thinks and feels internally. I just know from his global actions within the swimming world that that's exactly what he has done: he's protected the wrong people. It's not an adult who is having the career of a swim coach that needs protection. It's a child who, in my specific case and I think in the cases of many other young children, doesn't even have the vocabulary to be able to vocalize what's going on. The term "sexual abuse" was not even in my vocabulary until I was 22 or 23 years old. I was so naïve. And it's a naïve and innocent child that needs protection. It's not a grown adult. I think he was extremely misguided in his thought process of who needed the protection.

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I understand that you didn't feel like you could go public until after your swimming career was over, but you mentioned the group of your former teammates joining together to prosecute Andy King. How does that come about?

Andy King was arrested because of a very brave underage swimmer who actually told her priest what was happening. Ironically, about six months earlier a former teammate of mine was talking to another old teammate of mine. They were very close friends as well. And within their conversation they discovered that both of them had been sexually abused by Andy King. And because they suspected other swimmers and, in my particular case, so many people in USA Swimming nationwide heard rumors about me, I was the first person that those two swimmers contacted. Now one of the two was a detective, so she really knew which avenues to pursue and how to reassemble our swim team into a team to have Andy King prosecuted. And that happened six months before his current swimmer who was underage had confessed this to her priest. And the cops that she worked with were going to go arrest Andy King within days of him actually being arrested because of this other swimmer. So it was really in the works and it was because of her, this detective - I'm not using names because I don't know who would want me to use names - it was because of her, she was really the catalyst, and the two of them coming to me and saying, "We think this happened to you to," and me confirming. And between the three of us we contacted all the other friends that we had. You know, we had to do a little bit of research to do that, but as it turns out there were so many more of us and I really thought that I was the only one out of the whole entire team.

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As awful as that whole situation must have been, it was really fortunate that you had a former teammate who was a detective to help guide you, and that there were three of you so that no one had to go through the process alone.

It really, truly was a blessing. And it was very validating for all of us to get back together and be able to discuss this. You know, so many sexual abuse victims blame themselves, so in a lot of ways we were able to rewrite history. So it was a really, really good thing. And we were all very fortunate that she was in the line of work that she was in.

Your abuser, Andy King, has been convicted and sent to prison. Chuck Wielgus's name has now been withdrawn from Hall of Fame consideration. You were a champion swimmer who, I'm sure, viewed races in wins and losses. How do you view these occurrences? Are they wins? Do they provide validation? Is there ever any closure?

Well, it certainly does not feel like a win as I've felt when I would win in the swimming pool. It definitely has a different feel to it. It definitely has an achievement feeling. It certainly does have that. Closure? I don't know if there's ever any kind of closure. Many people have told me, "Oh, you finally have some closure now. It's not something that you have to think about anymore." It's not like that for me, and I don't think it's like that for a lot of victims, because it's made me who I am. It's affected my marriage. It's affected how I raise my children. I have two girls. I started at a very young age with my 8-year-old, giving her a vocabulary to talk about, you know, what is okay for an adult to do and what's not. I've talked to all of my friends who have kids and told them how important it is to give these children a vocabulary, and a safe place, to be able to say, "This is what's happening to me." I never felt like I had a safe place to go to to say, "Look, this is happening. Everybody's saying it's an affair, but this is not what I want. This not something I want to have happen." I never had a safe place to go and say that. And it's so important that children these days not only have the vocabulary to say it but have a safe place to go with that information to report it.

In the case of this swimmer back in 2010, 2009, who reported to her priest that this was happening, the courage that it takes for a young girl to be able to say that. It's an incredible amount of courage. But it's also a tribute to her parents who gave her that voice, and gave her that safety and let her know that she had the support to be able to say something like this. You know, so many kids don't have that support. So there's not closure because it's part of who I am. I'm grateful to be able to pass on my knowledge, having had that experience, to help prevent - I mean, God willing I could help prevent something like that from happening - but to help other people who are in that situation get out of it.

I've mentioned my brother a couple times. He was so supportive of me prosecuting Andy King. He talked about it in his school district and in his classroom, and he had students come to him and say, "I think I'm being sexually abused and I didn't know it." And again, because of what I was going through and because of the courage that he had to talk about a taboo subject, he helped to save other kids that maybe didn't have an avenue or an adult that they felt safe talking to. So it's kind of a convoluted answer, I realize, but it's not something that you just close the door on and get past and never address again. In my situation, I really had to get an education. Not just therapy, but an education to realize what exactly it was that happened to me personally. And to close the door on that knowledge and not pass it on to somebody to help out, I just think that would be not right. It would just be so wrong.

Read more: Part I Part II Part III Part V

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Denithorne-Grodensky is now a stay-at-home mom in Rochester, New York, with two girls, ages 8 and 3.

Rob Trucks interviews people. And not just former athletes. His latest book is on Fleetwood Mac's Tusk album, and some of his many conversations with 49-year-old Americans may be found at McSweeney's. Follow him on Twitter, if you must: @eyeglassesofky.