Former Kentucky Headvert Swim Coach Lars Jorgensen Settles Intercourse Abuse Lawsuit Filed by Two Former Swimmers

Former University of Kentucky head swim coach Lars Jorgensen has settled a lawsuit accusing him of sexual harassment and sexual assault that was introduced by two of his former swimmers in U.S. District Court.

Terms of the settlement weren’t launched, although it was dismissed with prejudice, that means the plaintiffs can’t file the identical lawsuit once more.

The settlement doesn’t have an effect on the claims towards the opposite defendants within the case, that are the University of Kentucky, and former Athletics Director Mitch Barnhart. Former head swim coach Gary Conelly was dismissed as a defendant in 2024.

Alleged Assaults

The first alleged assault dates again to December of 2013, at a crew Christmas social gathering that Jorgensen hosted at his home. A former swim crew staffer informed The Athletic that Jorgensen pressured her into his bed room and raped her. He is accused of constant to abuse the staffer over the following two years and telling her that no one would imagine her if she informed anybody. She in the end left in 2016 for a job at a “less prominent program.”

One of the plaintiffs within the lawsuit is Briggs Alexander, a former crew captain and an assistant coach with the Wildcats. The criticism claims that Jorgensen “groomed” Alexander throughout her time on the ladies’s crew from 2014-18. The different is a Jane Doe (nameless) plaintiff.

“Jorgensen isolated Alexander, sought to gain her trust, strove to control every facet of her life, and repeatedly made sexualized comments in an attempt to desensitize sexual topics,” says the lawsuit, which was filed within the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky.

In December of 2019, after the crew’s annual Christmas social gathering at Jorgensen’s home, Alexander alleges that Jorgensen pressured her into his bed room, pinned her down by the wrists, and raped her. She additionally described three extra sexual assaults whereas working as a volunteer assistant coach (2019-20) and assistant coach (2020-22) and a fourth that allegedly occurred in April of 2023, nearly a 12 months after resigning in May of 2022.

Alexander now identifies as male, however the lawsuit makes use of gender pronouns that align along with his transition timeline so readers can perceive “who I was in the moment when I was being abused.”

Jorgensen has additionally been accused of sending a member of the ladies’s swim crew images of his penis and movies of him masturbating, and sending suggestive messages to swimmers over social media.

Jorgensen represented the United States on the 1988 Olympic Games within the 1500 free, ending twenty third. He went on to swim on the University of Tennessee, graduating in 1994, and have become a graduate assistant coach there.

After just a few transient stints as a membership coach, he was an assistant at LSU from 1999 till 2004, when Toledo employed him as head coach.

In 2010, he returned to Tennessee because the successor to John Trembley, his former coach. In 2012, Trembley was fired after sending sexually express textual content emails from his college electronic mail account. Jorgensen took over because the interim head coach for the rest of the 2011-2012 season.

In June 2012, he was employed by Kentucky because the successor to Gary Conelly.

Jorgensen resigned as the varsity’s head swim coach in 2023 amid an investigation, and was given a $75,000 settlement on cash owed from the rest of his contract. At the time of his resignation, $402,500 remained on his contract by way of the 2024-2025 season.

In 2025, Jorgensen was banned from participation within the Olympic motion, together with youth sports activities, by the U.S. Center for SafeSport.