The new IOC President has the opportunity to finally put an end to athlete abuse

This month is Sexual Assault Awareness Month and it would be the perfect time to declare an end to abuse in sport

As the newly elected International Olympic Committee (IOC) president Kirsty Coventry takes the lead, she faces an intense challenge: protecting athletes from coaching abuse.

The issue was brought to the fore when Larry Nassar — the former team doctor for USA Gymnastics — went to prison for life on multiple charges of sexual assault and child pornography. He abused hundreds of gymnasts including 2012 Olympian McKayla Maroney and he did so at the Olympics and other internationally sanctioned competitions.  

At Nassar’s sentencing hearing Maroney said: “A question that has been asked over and over is: How could Larry Nassar have been allowed to assault so many women and girls for more than two decades?” 

The answer: the governing bodies put sponsorship dollars and their organizations’ reputations above protecting the athletes.

Coventry has pledged to protect women's sports, but this abuse is a decades-old tradition she is fighting. Despite the me too movement and the Nassar scandal, little actual progress has been made to protect athletes from abuse.

In 2017, Congress passed legislation called The Protecting Young Victims from Sexual Abuse and Safe Sport Authorization Act. Despite its implementation 8 years ago, not much has changed since I was competing on the U.S. Women’s National Gymnastics Team in the 1980s

Last fall the UN published a report — Violence against women and girls, its causes and consequences. It said that “research reveals the prevalence of sexual violence in coach-athlete relationships” and that “21 percent of girls globally have experienced a form of sexual abuse at least once as a child in sport.” 

In 1986, as a 17-year-old gymnast, I traveled to Moscow as a member of Team USA for the inaugural Goodwill Games. The head coach was the record-breaking coach of the1984 Olympic Team.

The coach, who was also our official chaperone, was rumored to be a sexual predator. Many of us on the team whispered about the rumors but we felt powerless to do anything.   

If we spoke about the matter in front of our personal club team coaches, we were told: Don’t let him in your room. So we just tried to avoid him off the competition floor. But the message was clear: he matters more than you do.

I grew up in an environment rife with physical, emotional and sexual coaching abuse. Two of the coaches on staff at my gym were known pedophiles who we also learned to avoid, if we were lucky.

Our weight was announced over the loudspeaker at the gym. We were poked and prodded, our “problem areas” pointed out to our teammates. I trained on a broken ankle for two years. I competed with two black eyes and several broken fingers. I was denied medical treatment when I needed stitches and had suffered a concussion from a head-landing.

When I was hungry, I was told I was a fat pig. When I was in pain, I was told I was lazy.

As I grew up, left the sport, and entered the world, I thought that I deserved every screaming bit of disparagement I got.

In 2008, after 20 years of struggling with low self-esteem, depression and anxiety, I sought to understand it. I was a successful person on the outside. I had two children, I was married, I was a vice president at Levi’s and had a thriving professional career. And still, I suffered from crippling self-doubt and shame.  

So, I wrote a book in an effort to make sense of it all. The book I wrote was Chalked Up. And it was the first first person account of abuse in gymnastics. I wrote about that coach who I traveled to Moscow with as a member of the national team.  

Team USA 1986. Me in the middle, national team coach on far right

The gymnastics community lashed out at me. My own teammates and coaches smeared me as a liar and a grifter. Governing bodies demonized me rather than investigate my claims.

Jane Allen, then head of Gymnastics Australia said at the time: “Gymnastics Australia is dismayed at former US gymnast Jennifer Sey’s critical view of the gymnastics world and the cloud that it casts over the high-performance programs, coaches and athletes training and competing in the sport in Australia.” (Note: Allen was forced to step down as the head of British Gymnastics in 2020 after failing to protect gymnasts from abuse in the U.K. for many years. We can only assume she did the same in Australia before she led British Gymnastics.)

I received repeated threatening voicemails from the head of USA Gymnastics urging me to stop talking about the subject and that it “wasn’t the 1980’s anymore.”

But three years after my book came out, that national team coach I traveled to Moscow with was banned from the sport for life. And years later, I was further vindicated with the conviction and life sentence of Larry Nassar. And in 2020, Jane Allen was forced to step down as the head of British Gymnastics amidst abuse allegations.

Amidst these revelations, I was invited to go to Washington D.C. and meet with Senator Dianne Feinstein, along with 10 other athletes. My 2-month old joined me for the trip (see Ruth below). I was not about to miss the opportunity to finally make a real impact, to support legislation to protect athletes from abuse, by telling my story.

After listening to our experiences, the senator promised us she would get legislation passed. And she did. The Protecting Young Victims from Sexual Abuse and Safe Sport Authorization Act became law in 2018.

But in the room that day, Senator Feinstein told us: I will get a law passed but only you can change the culture. And the culture change is going to be hard.  

It’s been eight years since that legislation passed and the U.S. Center for Safe Sport was established. Up until the passage of this legislation, coaches and other officials were not required to report abuse. In a 2015 deposition, then president of USA Gymnastics, Steve Penny said: “There’s no duty to report if you are a third party to some allegation.” The legislation made all coaches mandatory reporters.  

But today, the center is 4 years behind on reports of abuse. There is greater awareness but no solution. Sport remains a magnet for predators.

As the first woman elected to lead the IOC, Kirsty Coventry has the opportunity to put the athletes first and revolutionize the Olympic movement, once and for all.