Lawsuit Filed Against Robert Griswold, Accused of Raping Paralympic Teammate

A lawsuit filed Friday in Colorado district court alleges that U.S. Paralympic swimmer Robert Griswold “maliciously” groomed and abused a teammate with an intellectual disability, as previously reported by SwimSwam last month.

The civil complaint also accuses the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee (USOPC) and the U.S. Center for SafeSport of taking “extensive efforts to shield and protect Griswold, much to the detriment of Plaintiff and other team members.”

“This case is a horrific tragedy, where a young man who defied all odds to become a world-class Paralympic swimmer had his life utterly shattered by rape and abuse when he was paired with a team member who was a violent sexual predator,” the lawsuit begins.

The complaint claims that Griswold’s sexual assaults started last summer at the Tokyo Paralympics last July and continued through August of this year due to several failures of leadership. The accuser, currently 19 years old with “the mentality capacity of a 5-year old,” was roommates with the now-25-year-old Griswold in Tokyo and at the Paralympic Training Center in Colorado Springs.

“In addition to placing Griswold in Plaintiff’s bedroom, USOPC assigned Griswold to be a supervisor of Plaintiff, despite the fact that Griswold was a peer team member on the swim team rather than an adult supervisor and had no training or qualifications to serve as a supervisor,” the lawsuit says. “Remarkably, Defendant USOPC and Defendant U.S. Center for SafeSport (“SafeSport”) allowed Griswold to supervise and share a bedroom with Plaintiff without any oversight, despite the fact that USOPC and SafeSport had received reports that Griswold was sexually assaulting other teammates.”

The lawsuit claims that Griswold told his teammate, who has autism, that he “would get in trouble” and “police would come” if he told anyone what happened. The accuser suffered injuries that required rectal surgery and still require ongoing medical attention, according to the lawsuit. When his parents finally learned of the abuse from a story he wrote about “Hurricane Robert,” the complaint continues, they alerted the USOPC only to be assured that everything was under control.

“Plaintiff’s parents expressed their concerns to the USOPC, but the USOPC failed to investigate the issue and summarily and dismissively told Plaintiff’s parents that Plaintiff was just fine, and that Griswold posed absolutely no risk to Plaintiff,” the lawsuit says. “Concurrently, USOPC and SafeSport failed to inform Plaintiff’s parents of the risks to their son due to his intimate and continuing proximity to Griswold, a known (or at the very least, suspected) sexual predator.”

The lawsuit alleges that “upon information and belief, USOPC and SafeSport’s actions to insulate Griswold and further victimize Plaintiff were due in large part to the fact that Griswold was a premier swimmer, and because Griswold’s family was deeply embedded with leaders throughout the U.S. Paralympic swimming community.”

A lawyer representing Griswold told SwimSwam last month that he “vehemently denies any wrongdoing.”

The 63-page complaint is available to read in full here.

Griswold, who competes in the Paralympic classes S8, SB7 and SM8 and has cerebral palsy, has not been arrested or charged with a crime.

In addition to his Tokyo 2020 golds in the S8 100 backstroke and 100 butterfly, Griswold took bronze at Rio 2016 in the S8 100m backstroke and has won six world titles.

After the lawsuit was filed on Friday, the USOPC released a statement saying that two unspecified staff members have been placed on administrative leave. U.S. Paralympics swimming director Erin Popovich and Nathan Manley, the associate director of high performance, both had automatic emails sent from their accounts Monday stating they were on leave.