Track coach, former Olympian accused of serial sexual abuse over decades
A 67-year-old track coach who has been the subject of an ESPN investigation for a series of sexual assault allegations spanning back to the 1970s was arrested Wednesday in Los Angeles on charges of molesting a former athlete, the network reports.
Conrad Avondale Mainwaring faces a single felony count of sexual battery by fraud and faces four years in prison, according to the report.
Report: 31 men accuse Mainwaring of sex abuse
The network’s investigative journalism arm “Outside the Lines” reports that 31 men told them that Mainwaring sexually abused them over the course of 44 years, with the youngest known alleged victim being abused at 14 years old.
The charge pending from Wednesday’s arrest is the only reported charge Mainwaring faces.
Mainwaring, who competed for Antigua during the 1976 Olympics, is accused of convincing boys and young men to train with him and coercing them into allowing him to sexually abuse them by convincing them that control over their erections would affect their testosterone levels and improve their athletic performance.
‘You can be an Olympian too’
“You can be an Olympian too, you know. You can get to this level," an alleged victim told ESPN of Mainwaring’s justification for the alleged sexual contact he described as “clinical.”
The man who reported Mainwaring to police said that he was a 20-year-old college athlete when he was allegedly abused in 2016.
LAPD detective Sharlene Johnson said Mainwaring used “his position as a coach with athletes who are so focused and driven to be perfect at their craft that he was able to victimize them without them even realizing it.”
Dominican-born hurdler Felix Sanchez, who won Olympic gold medals in 2004 and 2012, told ESPN through a contact that he was not abused by Mainwaring when he trained with him.
Mainwaring stands accused of molesting victims in England in 1975 and at American summer camps and universities since, according to ESPN. He was not employed by any university athletic department, but worked on college campuses, according to the report.
More from Yahoo Sports:
