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The United States Tennis Association is defending itself against allegations that one of its top lawyers repeatedly tried to cover up sexual abuse, including warning the 22-time Grand Slam champion and survivor Pam Shriver is about to exercise caution when she discusses the issue.
On Monday, Stevie Gould, a former college player who successfully sued the USTA in 2020 over its failure to protect young players in California from a notorious sexual predator now serving a 255-year prison sentence, filed a complaint to the US Center for Safesport seeking punishment for Staciellen Mischel, the USTA’s deputy chief legal officer and the lead attorney for the USTA Foundation, for her actions in both this case and another involving a predatory tennis coach.
Safesport has a duty to investigate sexual and physical abuse and harassment claims in sports.
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The Safesport complaint cites an incident in the spring of 2022, when Mischel walked Shriver, a member of the International Tennis Hall of Fame, to his car following a fundraising dinner and told him to “be careful” about on his public statements on sexual abuse in tennis.
Shriver said he interpreted the message of the conversation as not to “say too much”.
Gould said in her complaint that Mischel used a similar strategy nine years ago, before her coach abused her. In a 2014 email to the head of the USTA’s Northern California section, Mischel said information about a police investigation into a well-known coach named Normandie Burgos and his suspension from USTA activities should remain confidential. Burgos began abusing Gould the following year, and was convicted of multiple counts of molestation.
In his complaint to Safesport, Gould said Mischel is “unfit to continue to serve in his current capacity for a national governing body.” He wrote that he “poses grave danger to children as long as he continues in that role. In short, children are not safe in tennis as long as this person is able to make decisions about their welfare .”
Chris Widmaier, the chief spokesman for the USTA, said last month that the organization would never stop anyone from telling their story of abuse, and Shriver certainly wasn’t. The organization declined to make Mischel available for an interview.
In a deposition, Mischel testified that because Shriver had previously conducted fundraising on behalf of the USTA, he was acting in his capacity as an attorney for the organization and privately warned Shriver to keep his distance from Robert Allard. , a leading attorney for plaintiffs in sports sexual abuse cases, whom Mischel described as not “a good person.”
In a statement Wednesday, Widmaier said the police investigating Burgos in 2014 requested “that this sensitive matter be treated confidentially to protect minors, prevent re-victimization, and not to interfere with an ongoing law enforcement investigation. We properly and promptly reported the information to law enforcement and cooperated with the investigation. We are confident that Ms. Mischel, in all respects, acted properly and in accordance with law.”
Shriver has become an ally of tennis sexual abuse survivors since going public with her own story of abuse last year. In a pre-trial deposition in the case between the USTA and Kylie McKenzie, a former promising junior, Shriver testified that Mischel approached her following a USTA fundraising dinner in California last year, to talk to him about his involvement in the case.
When an attorney representing the USTA in the McKenzie case asked Shriver if anyone at the USTA had encouraged him to speak out about sexual abuse, he replied: “It depends on how you interpret the conversation. from Staciellen. Part of my interpretation is that I have to be careful. And in that interpretation, that means don’t say too much.”
Shriver said he was silenced. (Roy Rochlin/Getty Images)
That exchange between Mischel and Shriver set off a difficult conflict between the USTA and one of the most decorated players in American tennis history, a prominent television commentator on ESPN and the Tennis Channel, and a figure who served as a high-profile volunteer. for the organization.
After Shriver testified on McKenzie’s behalf, with only limited time for cross-examination, USTA lawyers tried to serve him with a subpoena for further questioning in the days after the US Open. Unwilling to undergo further adversarial questioning, Shriver spent most of his time in and near his home until the deadline for further testimony passed.
McKenzie, a 24-year-old from Arizona, sued the USTA last year, and represented by Allard. He said the USTA failed to protect him from a coach who inappropriately touched her after a practice in 2018, when she was 19 and he was 34. That coach had previously touched a USTA employee several years prior to the contact with McKenzie, though the employee did not report her experience to anyone until McKenzie’s allegations were under investigation.
Gould, a 23-year-old from California who played tennis for the University of San Francisco, reached a lucrative deal with the USTA in 2021 over its failure to protect him and other players from Burgos, a renowned coach known for working class training. , immigrant kids at half the cost of other top coaches.
Burgos was previously accused of sexually assaulting young players at Tamalpais High School in Marin County, just north of San Francisco. Jurors could not reach a verdict in a 2010 case against him involving players from the school and declared a mistrial.
The USTA took no action against Burgos, and he set up a private training base in the East Bay city of Richmond, where he trained young players in his condominium complex. The USTA even provided travel grants that allowed his teams to represent Northern California in national tournaments.
Then in 2014, a player told police that Burgos asked for sex acts, and when the boy refused, Burgos withheld equipment or practice time and threatened to derail his college recruitment. After learning of the police investigation, the USTA suspended Burgos from participating in any USTA tournament, event or program.
However, in the same email in which he informed Steve Leube, the head of the USTA’s Northern California section, of Burgos’ suspension, Mischel also asked that Leube remain as quiet as possible about the allegations.
“All information regarding this matter must be handled with care and treated as confidential,” Mischel wrote.
Burgos then abused Gould, who didn’t learn of the email Mischel had sent until years later, an experience he described as “shocking.”
“If my parents knew about this there’s no way they would have let me spend countless hours training at this guy’s private complex,” said Gould, who has been coaching junior players in Marin County for the past few months. He said the decision to revisit the issue, two years after he settled his case was not easy, but ultimately it was something he could not overlook.
“There is a disconnect between how it should be handled and how it is,” he said.
In addition, Allard, as well as two other leading voices on sexual abuse in sports, Marci Hamilton, the founder of Child USA, and Nancy Hogshead-Makar, an Olympic champion swimmer, asked the US Congress on Thursday to open an investigation into the USTA’s handling of sexual abuse cases. They cited what they said was Mischel’s repeated attempts to silence the conversation about sexual abuse within the sport as justification for the investigation into what they consider the organization’s history of neglect.
“Athletes need to be made safe for them to achieve their goals, especially from known predators,” they wrote in the request for intervention, calling the situation at the USTA dire. “If sports leaders cannot follow these basics, they are not fit to perform the necessary tasks.”
(Top photo: Tim Clayton/Corbis via Getty Images)
