Q&A: The USA Gymnastics sex abuse scandal
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Title : Q&A: The USA Gymnastics sex abuse scandal
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news-today.world | We shall swing from a fun post back to a very serious one - I have been asked for my reaction to the Larry Nassar story, the USA Gymnastics team doctor who has been sentenced to 175 years in jail for sexually assaulting at least 265 girls and women (and these are only the ones who spoke out: we expect this number to keep rising) whilst working both for the American national team and at Michigan State university - I am sure I don't need to give you the gruesome details of this sordid tale given how it has made the headlines around the world. The scale of the abuse, how long it went on, just how many victims were involved, the toxic environment that allowed Nassar to get away with it for so long, the cover ups and the people who enabled Nassar - that's the scary thing because you don't expect this to happen in America today, but sure enough, it has. I don't want to recap or summarize the details of this case, but I want to offer a personal perspective as a former gymnast to answer some of the questions and I hope to be able to shed some light on the issue.
Q: Are you shocked that this has happened?
A: I am shocked that this has happened in America. I can imagine this happening in a place like China, Russia, Ukraine, India or some poorer country where talented gymnasts see sports as their one opportunity to get out of poverty, to get a better life. But in rich countries like America, Japan, Switzerland and Germany, gymnasts typically go to university and then take on jobs that may have little or nothing to do with gymnastics at all. They become lawyers, accountants, doctors and bankers whilst their counterparts in poorer countries tend to become coaches or work within some local government body dealing with sports. Thus that's why I was astonished that Nassar got away with this for so long in America, because Americans have far more opportunities say than some poor gymnast in Belarus or China - if they don't make the Olympic team, they go to university and then pursue a professional career. Look, I am a gymnast too, we train hard, our coaches push us hard, but there is a line where it crosses over into abuse and well, I just didn't think they would cross that line in America, to the extent where the gymnasts were so messed up as a result of the physical and emotional abuse they had to endure at the hand of their sadistic coaches that Nassar could easily take advantage of them.
Q: Did you witness sexual abuse or were you subjected to it personally?
A: We had Chinese coaches from China, we're not talking about local Singaporean-Chinese coaches but those from Beijing who pushed us as hard as they pushed their gymnasts in China. We were yelled at a lot, insulted, belittled, mocked - they would never physically hit us, but they knew how to punish us to make us feel pain by giving us punishments like, "your form was sloppy today, I'm giving you extra core conditioning because you're so weak and useless" and believe you me, after that punishment, you'd wish he'd just beat you up instead as it would hurt less. But you know, that was the culture and I didn't question it - I wanted to be turned into a champion and I'd like to think that even though I was a minor, a child at that time, I willingly gave my consent and took part in that training regime, I felt great honour to have been a part of it. I still believe it was a privilege to have been trained like that because I was taught to believe that my peers were fat, lazy, stupid and unmotivated kids who ate junk food and played computer games - they were the stupid idiots who would become failures in life whilst I would take that kind of extreme Chinese discipline with me long after I stop training gymnastics. I do still believe that today! My coaches were strict and very harsh, but they drew the line at physical and emotional abuse, it was never sexual. Never. Luckily, this never happened in Singapore.
Q: What about sexual abuse, as in the Nassar case in America?
I'm going to tell you a story without naming the country this coach worked at - I don't want to get sued by that country's gymnastics federation. In the 1990s, I represented Singapore in a lot of gymnastics competitions and it was a great opportunity to travel and meet gymnasts from other countries. I loved going to those competitions - so I was at this international competition when this coach from another country (which I shall not name) was very friendly with me - there was a huge language barrier with the gymnasts from that country as they didn't speak English and only spoke their native language, but this coach spoke some English and Mandarin so we had no problems talking to him. His gymnasts were so much better than the guys from the Singaporean team and when we realized we could communicate with him, we all were like, teach us, give us some tips, help us become better. My coaches, my older team mates were chatting with him and we were all quite in awe of this coach. I remember one of my older team mates had always wanted to learn a skill, a release move on the high bar and this coach started teaching him, within like 20 minutes my team mate was already attempting it and made far more progress in 20 minutes than he did in the last 6 months with this skill. We were even joking with him like, how much are they paying you? Please come work in Singapore, we'll pay you more, much more.
Well, this coach started giving me some attention during the training sessions for the meet and I was like, woah he wants to spend time with me and I genuinely felt honoured. I was young then, I was a teenager, I wasn't even the best gymnast on the national team then. He started holding me in my handstand and correcting my shoulder angle - I didn't think anything of it, I reacted the way any gymnast would, I did as I was told. Now as gymnasts, we don't think twice about a coach laying their hands on our bodies - that's perfectly normal to let your coach hold your back, your legs, your bum or anywhere they need to touch in order to correct your position or prevent you from falling. We just get so used to it, it's not considered sexual. Contrast that to a maths teacher in a school where the protocol is often for absolutely zero physically contact with students beyond a handshake and even then, I know of teachers who would not even do that to avoid any misunderstanding. When I came down from the handstand, I noticed that this coach was still placing his hands, squeezing my chest muscles and he said in English something I didn't quite understand because of his accent. I didn't quite know why he needed to squeeze my chest muscles like that - I remember I kept telling myself well this is in the gym, in front of everyone, surely this is normal, right? Mind you, Nassar often got away with what he did because he did it in plain sight of others in the gym. Hiding in plain sight. I then realized that he had been touching my thighs and bum when he was holding me in my handstand, but wait a minute, I thought he said he was correcting my shoulder angle?
He then suggested that I come to his hotel room later, to talk about gymnastics. I declined. He tried to put his hand on my shoulder in a friendly gesture, I remember stepping back and taking his hand, awkwardly shaking it as if to say, "we're done" and walking away. It wasn't just what he said, but it was the tone of his voice and the way he looked at me that made me say no. He then said, "shame, I can help you so much." Did I say anything to anyone? No, I didn't dare to. This is the first time I am talking about the incident and when he touched me inappropriately, I was just so focused on opening my shoulder angle I wasn't thinking of anything else - I completely trusted him the way gymnasts are meant to trust their coaches. Maybe he genuinely wanted to talk about gymnastics, but something made me sense that there was something wrong. This guy clearly had the respect of not just his gymnasts and his gymnastics federation, but also the entire Singaporean contingent were just in awe of this guy. How the hell was I going to speak up and expect to be believed? So I buried what happened at the back of my mind and ignored it. I could see that he was extremely friendly with some of his younger male gymnasts, also in their teens. Could he have been doing something with some of those younger boys? I don't know - in hindsight, probably: the opportunity was there, these teenagers were totally in awe of him, he could have done anything he wanted, I wouldn't be surprised if he had. I didn't want to think about it then, it wasn't my problem. I can see how so many of Nassar's victims didn't dare to speak up because they feared no one would believe them.
Q: What stopped you from going to his hotel room then?
A: I was young but I wasn't stupid. I knew exactly what would happen if I was alone with him. You wanna talk, why can't we talk in the gym, the hotel lobby, a cafe, in public where others are present? Why your hotel room of all places? Perhaps there was a part of me that thought that I wasn't that special, I wasn't that talented, certainly not compared to some of the better gymnasts in that competition - there was no way he would have singled me out for my talent or potential as a gymnast. I also understood gymnastics well enough - if he had said, "come to my gymnastics training center during your school holidays and we'll train you for four weeks," then yeah I would have jumped at the opportunity: but his hotel room? Please. I'm not stupid. I am however a typical product of the Chinese system: you don't talk back to your coach, you do as you're told with no more than a nod. If your coach tells you to do something 20 times, you are expected to just get on with it without asking stupid questions. Perhaps he saw that in my nature, perhaps he thought I would have followed him to his hotel room and done as I was told without asking stupid questions - but fortunately, I had enough self-awareness even at that age to realize that I had absolutely nothing to gain from placing myself in that kind of situation. It wasn't even as if he was my coach, I had just met him. In my messed up and confused teenage head, I didn't quite know what to make of the situation, so I just pretended nothing had happened as I had to focus on my competition. Besides, he worked in another country: I thought it wasn't my battle to fight, they had a problem but it wasn't my problem.
Q: Many of the victims of Nassar spoke about the toxic environment which created the situation that allowed Nassar to get away with what he did for so long - the coaches were all terribly abusive whilst Nassar presented himself as the only nice guy the girls could turn to. You seem however, to condone a kind of gymnastics training regime and discipline that is extremely harsh, what is your stance on the climate of fear the coaches created at USA Gymnastics?
A: There are two different kinds of gymnastics training: there's elite (or competitive gymnastics) where you get coaches yelling at you, making you work till your palms bleed and you get no sympathy. Then there's recreational gymnastics where you do like one or two hours a week, have fun, learn nothing, play stupid games and well, the latter is a complete waste of time but a lot of gymnastics clubs run programmes like that as they get huge volumes of kids through the door and they get to make a lot of money. The coach to student ratio is terrible compared to the competitive programme - it is such a waste of money for parents to enroll their kids in such recreational programmes. You can't make an omelet without breaking some eggs, we usually worry about injuries that can happen in a sport like gymnastics - the high levels of discipline and what you may call abuse is part and parcel of the competitive programme but even for someone like me who believes in the kind of harsh discipline enforced by the Chinese coaches, I believe that there is a line shouldn't be crossed and I'd define that line as when the gymnasts feel so scared of the coaches that they don't even dare to speak up, when they totally lose their voice in the process - that's when the young gymnasts become very vulnerable.
Q: Wait, wait. Hang on a second. You just said the gymnasts do as they're told without asking stupid questions, but now you're talking about the gymnasts having a voice - how do you reconcile those two statements then?
A: Allow me to explain how this is handled in the UK: in every gymnastics club, we have a welfare officer that the gymnasts, parents, coaches can turn to if there is an issue - the welfare officer is an impartial member of staff who will investigate anything from to their attention. There is also British Gymnastics, our governing body, whom you could turn to if you feel that the welfare officer is biased or ignored a serious complaint. So if a gymnast or parent has some concerns or a complaint, then they know exactly whom they can turn to in order to get the proper authorities to do something about the situation. So this kind of structure means that it allows the coaches to enforce the kind of discipline they need to in the training programme, they can be the bad cop whilst the welfare officer is the good cop - but a lot of it boils down to having the right kind of gymnasts in your competitive programme in the first place, the motivated kids who want to be there, who want to achieve something, you will have no discipline issues with them at all and they will do as they're told the way I did. I only see discipline problems with the kids who don't really wanna be there - like if their parents chose the sport for them, or maybe they liked it when they were younger and lost interest as they got older and would much rather do something else. Otherwise, you also have kids who have a problem with authority, they don't listen to their coaches - they probably don't listen to their teachers in school, their parents can't control them and the simple solution is to kick them out of the competitive gymnastics programme: schools don't have that solution, but gymnastics clubs can do that.
Q: In Nassar's case, what seemed to happen was that he acted effectively as the welfare officer for these gymnasts: he was the one the gymnasts turned to when the coaches were abusive and nasty. Surely if you were some kind of sexual predator, you would place yourself in the position of the welfare officer rather than coach: if you were the one who was meant to safeguard gymnasts from abuse, then you're scarily powerful because the buck stops with you.
A: Right, so there's another level of safeguard, which is to go directly to British Gymnastics and if they fail to act on a complaint, then one would go to the police. The problem in Nassar's case was that USAG creating an atmosphere where the gymnasts felt that they wouldn't be believed and even if they went to the law-enforcement authorities, the police would look into USAG and USAG would come out defending Nassar and calling the gymnast a liar. USAG clearly protected Nassar and covered up his crimes. That's the problem: Nassar got so powerful within USAG and his enablers just didn't care about the victims - but that's an attitude that is very prevalent in gymnastics and we have to change that.
Q: Were USAG merely in denial, were they duped by Nassar or were they enablers who knew about Nassar's sexual assaults and actively covered up what he did, allowing him to continue doing what he did? Because you know a lot of people are going to say, "I wasn't aware, don't blame me, I'm not responsible, blame someone else," when effectively, they were taken in by Nassar and were dumb enough to be convinced by him. What do we do with people like that?
A: I wish I knew the answer. I think there needs to be a proper investigation and trial about who knew what, hold these people to account about why didn't they respond to allegations of Nassar's sexual assaults and if found guilty, these people should be given a portion of Nassar's 175 jail sentence, he can't serve all 175 years, I'd gladly chuck Bela and Marta Karolyi in jail with him and let them die there too. Bela's already 75, he should not live out his last years as a free man. I want to see him rot in jail, then burn in hell. Public pressure has already forced the closure of the Karolyi's training facility in Texas - that's not the kind of result that a judge can deliver, this is public pressure via social media because no parent will ever let their children anywhere near that place again out of fear that their children will be repeatedly raped there. At least we've managed to destroy their business - but it's like the Harvey Weinstein case, he's not in jail, he's just disappeared from the public eye. Where's the justice in that? Why is Nassar in jail now but Weinstein still a free man?
Q: For the readers who are not familiar with the world of gymnastics, who are the Karolyis?
A: They are possibly the most famous gymnastics coaches in the world of gymnastics, having been credited with coaching Nadia Comaneci to victory in the 1976 Olympics. They defected to America in 1981 and then coached Mary Lou Retton to victory at the 1984 Olympics - beating Bela's old student Ecaterina Szabo: before that, America had limited success at gymnastics, they had some good gymnasts, but 1984 Olympics was their breakthrough year, helped by the Soviet and partial Eastern Bloc boycott of the 1984 Olympics in LA. The Karolyis then went on to produce plenty of world and Olympic champions in America, through a far more brutal Romanian style training regime which delivered such amazing results, blasting China, Russia, Romania and all other countries out of the water. Bela retired after the 1996 Olympics but his with Marta Karolyi remained the team co-ordinator, a very powerful position in USAG up till today. With Marta, they owned and ran the infamous 'ranch' training facility in Texas where so much of Nassar's abuse took place. USAG has only just announced that they've stopped using that facility - too little too late, you hypocrites. They are all complicit in the cover up, I want to see heads roll. It was public pressure that eventually closed the ranch, not the useless, spineless hypocrites at USAG. I just can't use words strong enough to condemn the very evil people at USAG.
Q: Why did so many people turn a blind eye to the abuse then?
A: America loves winning and the sport was so dominated by the Soviet Union until the breakup of the USSR - America filled that void left by the Soviets in women's gymnastics whilst China and Japan jointly filled that gap in men's gymnastics. America is now number one in the world of women's gymnastics and by a country mile, like they are just so much better than the rest of the world. In the 2016 Olympics, the US women's gymnastics team beat Russia by more than 8 points - that's an insane margin in a sport where scores go down to three decimal places. To give you an idea of magnitude, in the 2017 world championships men's vault finals, Kenzo Shirai of Japan beat Igor Radivilov of Ukraine by 0.001 - that's the kind margins we're dealing with in gymnastics. So when a training programme can deliver the kind of victory that we saw at the 2016 Olympics, USAG was more than happy to celebrate the success delivered thus far whilst turning a blind eye to the abuse. USAG is big business these days, they attract huge sponsorship from their corporate sponsors and there are many well paid jobs at USAG which depends on them continuing to deliver gold medals at world and Olympic level. Gymnastics in America is big business - it goes beyond the sponsorship deals, there are many elite gymnastics clubs which charge a lot for their training programmes. The celebrity coaches like Valeri Liukin or Liang Chow who have coached recent world and Olympic champions can charge a lot of money for their services. There is an unhealthy relationship between big business and sports in America, unlike other countries where national sports teams are primarily funded by the governments directly. Things have got to change radically if we are to fix the problem.
Q: Do you personally know any of the victims?
A: I am one removed from the victims - I have written for International Gymnast magazine in the past so I am friends with someone important people within the gymnastics-sports journalism community in America and so I have read a lot of the conversations that have gone on social media. One of the journalists would share an article and a lot of the current and former gymnasts who were part of the USA gymnastics programme (including those who have represented USA) would participate in those discussions. It is one thing to read about the news reports off a website like BBC or CNN but it is quite another thing to be able to read those conversations between the gymnasts themselves who have been a part of the programme, some of whom have been treated by Nassar. It gave me quite an insight about the kind of anger there is amongst the women involved in gymnastics in America - the key focus of their discussions has been about the enablers, the people at USAG who turned a blind eye to complaints about Nassar's sexual assaults and allowed him to continue for so long. We want to see the trials continue, we want to see heads roll, we want to see key figures at USAG thrown in jail for having allowed this to happen, for being Nassar's enablers. I want to see Marta Karolyi thrown in jail for a long time.
One of the most impactful victim statements was from former national team member Mattie Larson who said in court, "Marta, did you keep Larry around because he was a good doctor?” Larson asked. “Or did you really keep him around because he let us compete when we were injured and was willing to keep your secrets?” Oh amongst the gymnastics community that I have had the privilege to have an insight into via my journalism contacts, the consensus is that Marta Karolyi is not only complicit in this whole process, but she knew about the abuse and turned a blind eye to it because she was so selfish, she didn't even care what happened to her gymnasts. She's a monster who deserves to share that jail cell with Nassar for the rest of her days on earth - but going beyond that, even if we throw that wretched bitch Marta Karolyi in jail for the rest of her life for her evil deeds, this only raises more questions: why did USAG embrace wicked, evil people like Nassar and the Karolyis, putting them in such powerful positions for so long? Who should take responsibility for this situation and once you start holding the Karolyis to account, there must be hundreds of people who were enablers, who deserve to be in jail. That's the daunting scale of this situation and it must not stop with Nassar's sentencing - this should be just the beginning of a much bigger process to rid USAG of evil, rather than the end of the story. So many enablers have been named, so many - we know who these people are, the gymnastics community knows exactly who they are, we now know people like Nassar are not so powerful you can't go after him: we got Nassar, that's one down and many, many more to go. So many bad people need to be held accountable, we want justice.
Q: Why did so many victims stay silent and for so long?
A: Just look at the wider culture of sexism and misogyny in the USA as well as around the world, where women are not believed when they make a report, when rape victims are told they only have themselves to blame. For crying out aloud, Trump can make outrageously offensive statements like "grab them by the pussy" and still become president - he still managed to get the votes of American women. You see, amongst me and my friends in the gymnastics community, there isn't any doubt that Nassar is 100% guilty and that his enablers are all evil people who need to be put on trial as soon as possible - but if you were to go on some of these news websites where you can leave comments on the news and interact with other readers, it is shocking what some of the American males have been saying about these women who came forward. They used some very derogatory language (which I shan't repeat here) to describe the women, they accused them of either lying, making up the stories to get attention or some even suggested that they willingly consented to sex with Nassar - I can't even begin to unpick the crap they came up with. These were minors, how could they give consent when a grown man abuses them? These men don't care about the truth - they don't care about justice, they have no compassion, no morals. Their misogyny runs so deep they believe what they want to believe and you can't even begin to reason with them. And you thought America was a decent, civilized country? With so many evil American men like that out there who react with such hatred towards the victims, is it any wonder why so few victims dared to speak up? It has been estimated that the women who speak up are but a portion of Nassar's victims, there are many more - hundreds more, even into the thousands, who don't dare to speak up out of fear of the hateful mob on the internet.
Don't forget, many of the victims were minors, they were children at the time Nassar assaulted them. I remember when I met that creepy coach at that competition, the one who invited me to his hotel room - I was just a minor, a teenager then. When you're that young, you can't be expected to know what to do, you can't be given the responsibility to fix something that is so wrong with the system. Adults are meant to be there to protect you: your parents, your coach, your gymnastics federation, all these people should have been there to protect the children, the minors who were too young to fix the problem. That is why what Nassar did is so despicable, he preyed on children, knowing they were unable to speak up and even if they did, they were unlikely to be believed. And even after so many women spoke out, not everyone still believes them, some still actually believe that Nassar is innocent. That's unreal and indicative of how sick America is as a society. Fortunately, judge Rosemarie Aquilina delivered justice and this isn't trial by social media - thank goodness for judge Aquilina who made sure justice was delivered. She a true hero, I am so glad the judge isn't some old white guy.
Q: Why is America so very misogynistic then? Why are women treated with so little respect in 2018?
A: I'm British and you're probably better off asking an American that question. What I can tell you is that many American women hate the current situation, they are frustrated, angry and they want change to come but nothing's going to change. We all felt so much optimism under Obama now it's just doom and gloom when American went to the dark side and elected Trump. If the people at the top, if the president doesn't respect women, then it sends out all the wrong messages. American culture does not respect women the way Western and Northern European culture does - unfortunately that's not always the case: women are not as respected in Southern and especially Eastern Europe. The fact is Trump couldn't have gotten into the White House without the votes and support of women - you get the president, the government and the country you vote for and Nassar was literally doing what Trump said, "grab them by the pussy". I hope these women who voted for Trump realize that they made an awful mistake. It doesn't help of course, that my American friends in the gymnastics community all voted for Clinton and they hate Trump, but they're stuck in America.
Q: So is there something about the culture of gymnastics that needs to change - or is this more a reflection of what is going on in society in general, that women are raped, that vulnerable individuals are being taken advantage of? What more needs to be done in order to prevent abuse from happening? What practical steps need to be taken now?
A: I think the impression that a lot of people get of professional gymnasts is that we are asexual, that sex is not a part of our lives. We eat, sleep, train, compete and study - we don't have relationships, we don't have sex, we are treated like kids because we act like obedient children even when we are like 18 years old. But sure gymnasts have relationship, become sexually active and that's something that people tend to ignore. One of the shocking stories that emerged this week was the rape of Icelandic gymnast Tinna Óðinsdóttir at a competition in Germany in 2016 - now I've been to loads of gymnastics competitions over the years and yeah, I can imagine this kind of thing taking place. These gymnasts are away from home, the competition is over, their parents are not around and the coaches think okay, I don't need to keep an eye on you. It's horrific what happened to her and I hope she gets justice, I hope she gets the help and support she needs. She is very brave in speaking out, my heart goes out to her. I can look back upon my own experience growing up as a gymnast and think about the number of times things could have gone wrong and realize that I was so very lucky I was able to meet so many good, kind people along the way who took care of me rather than exploited my vulnerability.
Q: Why were you so vulnerable?
A: To begin with, I am autistic, my parents are autistic, it runs in my family, we have the autism gene over three generations. I was always a very awkward child who had no friends, just as my gymnastics flourished, I didn't get along with the people at my school's gymnastics club and was subjected the a lot of bullying - I was ostracized for a number of reasons, mostly because I took gymnastics a lot more seriously than my team mates and they couldn't stand the fact that I was improving a lot more quickly. I was training like 6 or 7 times a week whilst they barely put in half of that, so of course you reap what you sow in a sport like that. The atmosphere was really toxic, you can't say, "oh they are just kids" - I think adults have a greater sense of self-awareness and they know where the line is, but kids and teenagers can be really awful because they have no boundaries, they will go out of their way to make life hell for someone if they get jealous of them or hate them for whatever reason. In recent years, I became very good friends with a Hungarian diver who used to represent Hungary in diving, she was at one time the national champion there too - different sport, same toxic environment. The other divers hated her and bullied her because she was better and they were jealous. I think we're such good friends today because we found someone who endured the same awful, toxic environment and it's not the kind of empathy you can find unless the other person understands exactly what kind of hell you had been through.
Imagine growing up in that kind of really toxic environment, as a child, as a teenager and having to cope with all that on your own with no one to turn to - I didn't dare tell my parents out of fear that they would just pull the plug on my gymnastics. My parents are so autistic, you can't expect them to understand the complexities of issues like that, they just can't - it's like explaining algebra to a cat, you can't get through to them no matter how you try. I was lucky when I was able to move to the national training center at the age of 14, away from the toxic environment at my school to train. Things improved but I was still very much the quiet gymnast who trained long hours without talking. There was a group of older male gymnasts who eventually retired from the sport when I was about 17 or 18 - one by one, they completed their further education, got full time jobs and left gymnastics. The coaches then assembled a new group of younger male gymnasts to be the next generation, so I was training with kids who were like 12 years old whilst I was 18 to 21 years old at the national training center. Was it weird that my best friends were so much younger than me? I suppose but autistic kids are always a few years behind their peers when it comes to social skills and mental age: academically I was a straight-As scholar, I was a brilliant gymnast and national champion but socially, well, I found solace in training with a bunch of kids younger than me knowing that they couldn't bully me my teammates once did when I was younger.
By the time I was like 20, 21 - I was built like a strong gymnast, a young man who looked like an adult but I probably had the mental age of like a 15 year old and the social skills of a 12 year old. I wasn't prepared to deal with adults even though people treated me like one and expected me to function like one. That was why I felt so at home, so safe, training in the company of much, much younger gymnasts who were also much younger. At that age, you're expected to act and function like an adult, but in the gym, you could be like a child again and just listen to your coach. Normal teenagers do things like go to parties, hang out with their friends, go to the mall or the movies together - that's how they learned to develop those important social skills. I actually didn't do any of that, for me it was school or gymnastics and there was nothing else beyond that which could have stretched me socially, to teach me how to make friends, get along with my peers. Gymnastics can be a very lonely sport: when you train your routines, you need to focus, you don't chat, you don't think about the world outside the gym - you need to focus all your energy and thoughts on what you're training. Whenever the outside world scared me, whenever I had any problems, I would retreat to my safe space and that was the gym where I knew I could mentally block out the world, shut out anyone who was bothering me and just train. Luckily, I did a lot of growing up when I was in the army and at university. I still train four times a week at my local gymnastics club.
Gymnasts constantly seek approval, it's a part of our sport: we are judged. The winner is the gymnast who is given the top scores: thus we are eager to please and nowadays, you learn a new skill, you film it and put it on Instagram and instantly people like it, leave comments and great - you can get that approval from strangers from halfway around the world you have never ever met. How cool is that? That's why I am really liking Instagram right now and am posting clips from my training sessions on Instagram. But back in the 1990s, I didn't even have a mobile phone and video cameras were rare - so we were constantly dependent on our coaches and team mates for approval. I wasn't getting any love or approval from my parents at home - they never understood why I did gymnastics. Mind you, it wasn't just gymnastics, they didn't understand anything I did from age of like 13 or 14 and I was never close to them anyway. We got to the situation where I had far more respect for my coaches than my own parents, I craved for my coach's approval because I knew I could earn it, I knew if I did well he would praise me whilst I was never ever going to get that from my own parents. If someone like Nassar or that creepy coach mentioned earlier had been there to exploit my desperate desire for approval, then yeah - anyone could have exploited my vulnerability. So when I read about the toxic environment Nassar's victims were in, yeah I can see how that created so much vulnerability amongst the gymnasts to allow Nassar get away with this for so long. This is nothing new in America - this is painfully similar to the Penn State child sex abuse scandal.
Q: The word 'grooming' was used a lot in the Nassar case, what does that mean in this context?
A: As you can see, there is a lot of vulnerability when it comes to young gymnasts - it tends to attract a certain kind of young people who are very driven, very determined, but within that environment, you also get gymnasts who become very docile, very obedient and do as they are told. Coaches tend to favour those gymnasts who never talk back, who never argue, who never protest because they are just so much easier to teach; there are no discipline issues, the coach can say, "do this ten times" and trust that the gymnast will do it. You're expecting children at the age of like 9 or 10 to have the kind of discipline that you wouldn't even expect of a normal adult. It can go too far - there are stories of gymnasts who then become so scared of their coaches they don't even dare speak up if they have an injury during training. There was that famous story of Nadia Comaneci who was once training when she ran a high fever and the coaches only realized when they actually physically supported her in a skill and realized she was burning up. There is a huge difference between say a 25 year old going through that process and a 9 year old going through that process: the 9 year old doesn't have the maturity to deal with such a situation yet they are effectively training like professional athletes, achieving far more at that age than a lot of adults out there. You need to train like that as a child to become a champion.
Gymnasts at that age can become very quiet, very insecure, they crave approval from their coaches and that validation becomes totally associated with winning the next gold medal at the next competition so when they fail to deliver at the competitions, it can crush their spirits and they just don't have the emotional maturity to deal with that at that age, even if they have the discipline to train like adults. Even if they feel disappointment, anger, fear or pain, gymnasts are trained to bottle up their feelings and not show weakness, but they are human after all. Of course they need love and reassurance. Someone like Nassar would then place himself in a position of trust and win these gymnasts over - he would start out as their friend, becoming the person they would confide in, he would win their trust: someone like that may be the only person the gymnast may open up to, but when the only person the gymnast trusts is a sexual predator who is willing to do anything to sexually exploit that child, that's when you have a situation where someone like Nassar was able to get away with what he did. It makes me so angry because I was in that position where nobody really cared if I was vulnerable or emotionally stable: all my parents and coaches cared about was if I kept my mouth shut and did as I was told at that age. Grooming can only happen when vulnerable children are in a position like that - normal, well-adjusted kids who have healthy relationships with their families, with their coaches and teachers will not be groomed. Sexual predators like Nassar would target the most vulnerable kids knowing that they would easily submit to his grooming.
Q: What do you think will happen next?
A: Well there's a huge gulf between what many of us would like to happen and what may actually happen. There are so many people from within the gymnastics community who want to see heads roll, so many of us want to see the heads at Michigan State University, USAG and USOC thrown in jail for having ignored so many warning signs, putting profit before the welfare of the gymnasts. We also want to see a thorough investigation into other sports as well - if there is one Larry Nassar who was caught, how many more are there out there, exploiting vulnerable young people? But what will actually happen is probably that the story will die down over the next few weeks and months, like the whole Grenfell Tower fire story in London. When it first happened, there was so much public anger, there were protests in the streets and the government made so many promises - it has been 6 months and has anything happened? Absolutely nothing. None of the people responsible have been arrested and thrown in jail, the media has moved on. I can still see the burnt out Grenfell Tower from the train I take to work - it's still there, as a gruesome reminder that so many people died and they're not going to get any justice. Will this go down the same route? It is a possibility of course but there are some variables.
This is America we're talking about - there have already been many lawsuits brought against MSU and USAG over the Nassar case and look, Nassar is already in jail, he has been sentenced. It's hard for MSU or USAG to claim they have no responsibility over what has happened and there will be a many more lawsuits and settlements. This is a process that can go on for months, even years as MSU and USAG face a record number of lawsuits from Nassar's victims - MSU already faces 144 lawsuits (this number is expected to grow) relating to Nassar: that could become a story in itself and it sounds awful that we're focusing on the payouts and settlements rather than the pain of the victims, but you need to feed the media something new, a new development, a new twist to the story in order to keep it in the headlines. Say if USAG or MSU goes bust under the weight of so many lawsuits and settlements, then yeah that'll be a huge story that will keep the story alive and more pressure on these organizations. Or if they uncover yet another predator who operated like Nassar, then that will keep the story alive too. If you want a fire to keep burning, you have to keep feeding it fuel: the same principle applies to a story like that where public pressure is crucial in holding these organisations to account otherwise, it will just end up much the same way as the Grenfell Tower fire. The victims are still there you know, but nobody cares anymore - I really don't want this to happen in this case. I'm a lifelong gymnast, this is my community.
Q: This may be a rhetorical question, but Nassar may be behind bars now, but do you think this is happening elsewhere, in other countries? Maybe in other sports apart from gymnastics? Or is this an isolated case?
A: Well obviously, yes to both questions. Yes if this can happen in America, it definitely can happen in other countries and at MSU, Nassar was the rowing team's doctor as well, so we're only just scratching the surface now. These universities, these sports organisations and federations have had a wake up call to take a look at what the hell is happening and hopefully, this is the beginning of a purge of the evil people who put medals ahead of the welfare of the young athletes. I shudder to think what else may be uncovered and revealed in the coming weeks. Watch this space, this is far from over.
Q: What can parents of gymnasts do, if they are concerned over what happened?
A: The first thing to do is to make sure you have a decent relationship with your child - I didn't dare go to my parents with my problems because I didn't trust them. Sigh, I know it sounds incredibly mean of me to say this, but even from a young age, like when I was a child, I knew something was wrong with them. Like they weren't the same as other normal parents, now I realize they're autistic. As an adult, with the benefit of hindsight, yeah now I understand what was going on - but imagine what it was like for me as a child back then. Asian parents demand unconditional respect and obedience, they don't understand that respect and even basic trust is earned. And as an Asian child, if you don't give your parents unconditional respect and obedience, if you don't trust your parents, then you're the evil child who is at fault. Perhaps what I am stating is obvious: if your child is bullied at school, if your child is abused or raped, you must create the kind of trust within your relationship whereby your child should feel safe enough to confide in you and tell you the truth - I never had that. I just plain didn't trust my parents because of their autistic behaviour, I feared them, they were irrational and had bad tempers, they never listened to a word I said anyway and I doubted that they would believe me if I went to them with anything like that. What kind of relationships with their parents did the victims of Nassar have? I do know what it is like to feel you just can't trust your own parents. It is a very real situation for children to find themselves in.
I can only write so much about this story, I shall end here - please let me know what you think. Many thanks for reading.
Q: Are you shocked that this has happened?
A: I am shocked that this has happened in America. I can imagine this happening in a place like China, Russia, Ukraine, India or some poorer country where talented gymnasts see sports as their one opportunity to get out of poverty, to get a better life. But in rich countries like America, Japan, Switzerland and Germany, gymnasts typically go to university and then take on jobs that may have little or nothing to do with gymnastics at all. They become lawyers, accountants, doctors and bankers whilst their counterparts in poorer countries tend to become coaches or work within some local government body dealing with sports. Thus that's why I was astonished that Nassar got away with this for so long in America, because Americans have far more opportunities say than some poor gymnast in Belarus or China - if they don't make the Olympic team, they go to university and then pursue a professional career. Look, I am a gymnast too, we train hard, our coaches push us hard, but there is a line where it crosses over into abuse and well, I just didn't think they would cross that line in America, to the extent where the gymnasts were so messed up as a result of the physical and emotional abuse they had to endure at the hand of their sadistic coaches that Nassar could easily take advantage of them.
Q: Did you witness sexual abuse or were you subjected to it personally?
A: We had Chinese coaches from China, we're not talking about local Singaporean-Chinese coaches but those from Beijing who pushed us as hard as they pushed their gymnasts in China. We were yelled at a lot, insulted, belittled, mocked - they would never physically hit us, but they knew how to punish us to make us feel pain by giving us punishments like, "your form was sloppy today, I'm giving you extra core conditioning because you're so weak and useless" and believe you me, after that punishment, you'd wish he'd just beat you up instead as it would hurt less. But you know, that was the culture and I didn't question it - I wanted to be turned into a champion and I'd like to think that even though I was a minor, a child at that time, I willingly gave my consent and took part in that training regime, I felt great honour to have been a part of it. I still believe it was a privilege to have been trained like that because I was taught to believe that my peers were fat, lazy, stupid and unmotivated kids who ate junk food and played computer games - they were the stupid idiots who would become failures in life whilst I would take that kind of extreme Chinese discipline with me long after I stop training gymnastics. I do still believe that today! My coaches were strict and very harsh, but they drew the line at physical and emotional abuse, it was never sexual. Never. Luckily, this never happened in Singapore.
Q: What about sexual abuse, as in the Nassar case in America?
I'm going to tell you a story without naming the country this coach worked at - I don't want to get sued by that country's gymnastics federation. In the 1990s, I represented Singapore in a lot of gymnastics competitions and it was a great opportunity to travel and meet gymnasts from other countries. I loved going to those competitions - so I was at this international competition when this coach from another country (which I shall not name) was very friendly with me - there was a huge language barrier with the gymnasts from that country as they didn't speak English and only spoke their native language, but this coach spoke some English and Mandarin so we had no problems talking to him. His gymnasts were so much better than the guys from the Singaporean team and when we realized we could communicate with him, we all were like, teach us, give us some tips, help us become better. My coaches, my older team mates were chatting with him and we were all quite in awe of this coach. I remember one of my older team mates had always wanted to learn a skill, a release move on the high bar and this coach started teaching him, within like 20 minutes my team mate was already attempting it and made far more progress in 20 minutes than he did in the last 6 months with this skill. We were even joking with him like, how much are they paying you? Please come work in Singapore, we'll pay you more, much more.
Well, this coach started giving me some attention during the training sessions for the meet and I was like, woah he wants to spend time with me and I genuinely felt honoured. I was young then, I was a teenager, I wasn't even the best gymnast on the national team then. He started holding me in my handstand and correcting my shoulder angle - I didn't think anything of it, I reacted the way any gymnast would, I did as I was told. Now as gymnasts, we don't think twice about a coach laying their hands on our bodies - that's perfectly normal to let your coach hold your back, your legs, your bum or anywhere they need to touch in order to correct your position or prevent you from falling. We just get so used to it, it's not considered sexual. Contrast that to a maths teacher in a school where the protocol is often for absolutely zero physically contact with students beyond a handshake and even then, I know of teachers who would not even do that to avoid any misunderstanding. When I came down from the handstand, I noticed that this coach was still placing his hands, squeezing my chest muscles and he said in English something I didn't quite understand because of his accent. I didn't quite know why he needed to squeeze my chest muscles like that - I remember I kept telling myself well this is in the gym, in front of everyone, surely this is normal, right? Mind you, Nassar often got away with what he did because he did it in plain sight of others in the gym. Hiding in plain sight. I then realized that he had been touching my thighs and bum when he was holding me in my handstand, but wait a minute, I thought he said he was correcting my shoulder angle?
He then suggested that I come to his hotel room later, to talk about gymnastics. I declined. He tried to put his hand on my shoulder in a friendly gesture, I remember stepping back and taking his hand, awkwardly shaking it as if to say, "we're done" and walking away. It wasn't just what he said, but it was the tone of his voice and the way he looked at me that made me say no. He then said, "shame, I can help you so much." Did I say anything to anyone? No, I didn't dare to. This is the first time I am talking about the incident and when he touched me inappropriately, I was just so focused on opening my shoulder angle I wasn't thinking of anything else - I completely trusted him the way gymnasts are meant to trust their coaches. Maybe he genuinely wanted to talk about gymnastics, but something made me sense that there was something wrong. This guy clearly had the respect of not just his gymnasts and his gymnastics federation, but also the entire Singaporean contingent were just in awe of this guy. How the hell was I going to speak up and expect to be believed? So I buried what happened at the back of my mind and ignored it. I could see that he was extremely friendly with some of his younger male gymnasts, also in their teens. Could he have been doing something with some of those younger boys? I don't know - in hindsight, probably: the opportunity was there, these teenagers were totally in awe of him, he could have done anything he wanted, I wouldn't be surprised if he had. I didn't want to think about it then, it wasn't my problem. I can see how so many of Nassar's victims didn't dare to speak up because they feared no one would believe them.
Q: What stopped you from going to his hotel room then?
A: I was young but I wasn't stupid. I knew exactly what would happen if I was alone with him. You wanna talk, why can't we talk in the gym, the hotel lobby, a cafe, in public where others are present? Why your hotel room of all places? Perhaps there was a part of me that thought that I wasn't that special, I wasn't that talented, certainly not compared to some of the better gymnasts in that competition - there was no way he would have singled me out for my talent or potential as a gymnast. I also understood gymnastics well enough - if he had said, "come to my gymnastics training center during your school holidays and we'll train you for four weeks," then yeah I would have jumped at the opportunity: but his hotel room? Please. I'm not stupid. I am however a typical product of the Chinese system: you don't talk back to your coach, you do as you're told with no more than a nod. If your coach tells you to do something 20 times, you are expected to just get on with it without asking stupid questions. Perhaps he saw that in my nature, perhaps he thought I would have followed him to his hotel room and done as I was told without asking stupid questions - but fortunately, I had enough self-awareness even at that age to realize that I had absolutely nothing to gain from placing myself in that kind of situation. It wasn't even as if he was my coach, I had just met him. In my messed up and confused teenage head, I didn't quite know what to make of the situation, so I just pretended nothing had happened as I had to focus on my competition. Besides, he worked in another country: I thought it wasn't my battle to fight, they had a problem but it wasn't my problem.
Q: Many of the victims of Nassar spoke about the toxic environment which created the situation that allowed Nassar to get away with what he did for so long - the coaches were all terribly abusive whilst Nassar presented himself as the only nice guy the girls could turn to. You seem however, to condone a kind of gymnastics training regime and discipline that is extremely harsh, what is your stance on the climate of fear the coaches created at USA Gymnastics?
A: There are two different kinds of gymnastics training: there's elite (or competitive gymnastics) where you get coaches yelling at you, making you work till your palms bleed and you get no sympathy. Then there's recreational gymnastics where you do like one or two hours a week, have fun, learn nothing, play stupid games and well, the latter is a complete waste of time but a lot of gymnastics clubs run programmes like that as they get huge volumes of kids through the door and they get to make a lot of money. The coach to student ratio is terrible compared to the competitive programme - it is such a waste of money for parents to enroll their kids in such recreational programmes. You can't make an omelet without breaking some eggs, we usually worry about injuries that can happen in a sport like gymnastics - the high levels of discipline and what you may call abuse is part and parcel of the competitive programme but even for someone like me who believes in the kind of harsh discipline enforced by the Chinese coaches, I believe that there is a line shouldn't be crossed and I'd define that line as when the gymnasts feel so scared of the coaches that they don't even dare to speak up, when they totally lose their voice in the process - that's when the young gymnasts become very vulnerable.
Q: Wait, wait. Hang on a second. You just said the gymnasts do as they're told without asking stupid questions, but now you're talking about the gymnasts having a voice - how do you reconcile those two statements then?
A: Allow me to explain how this is handled in the UK: in every gymnastics club, we have a welfare officer that the gymnasts, parents, coaches can turn to if there is an issue - the welfare officer is an impartial member of staff who will investigate anything from to their attention. There is also British Gymnastics, our governing body, whom you could turn to if you feel that the welfare officer is biased or ignored a serious complaint. So if a gymnast or parent has some concerns or a complaint, then they know exactly whom they can turn to in order to get the proper authorities to do something about the situation. So this kind of structure means that it allows the coaches to enforce the kind of discipline they need to in the training programme, they can be the bad cop whilst the welfare officer is the good cop - but a lot of it boils down to having the right kind of gymnasts in your competitive programme in the first place, the motivated kids who want to be there, who want to achieve something, you will have no discipline issues with them at all and they will do as they're told the way I did. I only see discipline problems with the kids who don't really wanna be there - like if their parents chose the sport for them, or maybe they liked it when they were younger and lost interest as they got older and would much rather do something else. Otherwise, you also have kids who have a problem with authority, they don't listen to their coaches - they probably don't listen to their teachers in school, their parents can't control them and the simple solution is to kick them out of the competitive gymnastics programme: schools don't have that solution, but gymnastics clubs can do that.
Q: In Nassar's case, what seemed to happen was that he acted effectively as the welfare officer for these gymnasts: he was the one the gymnasts turned to when the coaches were abusive and nasty. Surely if you were some kind of sexual predator, you would place yourself in the position of the welfare officer rather than coach: if you were the one who was meant to safeguard gymnasts from abuse, then you're scarily powerful because the buck stops with you.
A: Right, so there's another level of safeguard, which is to go directly to British Gymnastics and if they fail to act on a complaint, then one would go to the police. The problem in Nassar's case was that USAG creating an atmosphere where the gymnasts felt that they wouldn't be believed and even if they went to the law-enforcement authorities, the police would look into USAG and USAG would come out defending Nassar and calling the gymnast a liar. USAG clearly protected Nassar and covered up his crimes. That's the problem: Nassar got so powerful within USAG and his enablers just didn't care about the victims - but that's an attitude that is very prevalent in gymnastics and we have to change that.
Q: Were USAG merely in denial, were they duped by Nassar or were they enablers who knew about Nassar's sexual assaults and actively covered up what he did, allowing him to continue doing what he did? Because you know a lot of people are going to say, "I wasn't aware, don't blame me, I'm not responsible, blame someone else," when effectively, they were taken in by Nassar and were dumb enough to be convinced by him. What do we do with people like that?
A: I wish I knew the answer. I think there needs to be a proper investigation and trial about who knew what, hold these people to account about why didn't they respond to allegations of Nassar's sexual assaults and if found guilty, these people should be given a portion of Nassar's 175 jail sentence, he can't serve all 175 years, I'd gladly chuck Bela and Marta Karolyi in jail with him and let them die there too. Bela's already 75, he should not live out his last years as a free man. I want to see him rot in jail, then burn in hell. Public pressure has already forced the closure of the Karolyi's training facility in Texas - that's not the kind of result that a judge can deliver, this is public pressure via social media because no parent will ever let their children anywhere near that place again out of fear that their children will be repeatedly raped there. At least we've managed to destroy their business - but it's like the Harvey Weinstein case, he's not in jail, he's just disappeared from the public eye. Where's the justice in that? Why is Nassar in jail now but Weinstein still a free man?
Q: For the readers who are not familiar with the world of gymnastics, who are the Karolyis?
A: They are possibly the most famous gymnastics coaches in the world of gymnastics, having been credited with coaching Nadia Comaneci to victory in the 1976 Olympics. They defected to America in 1981 and then coached Mary Lou Retton to victory at the 1984 Olympics - beating Bela's old student Ecaterina Szabo: before that, America had limited success at gymnastics, they had some good gymnasts, but 1984 Olympics was their breakthrough year, helped by the Soviet and partial Eastern Bloc boycott of the 1984 Olympics in LA. The Karolyis then went on to produce plenty of world and Olympic champions in America, through a far more brutal Romanian style training regime which delivered such amazing results, blasting China, Russia, Romania and all other countries out of the water. Bela retired after the 1996 Olympics but his with Marta Karolyi remained the team co-ordinator, a very powerful position in USAG up till today. With Marta, they owned and ran the infamous 'ranch' training facility in Texas where so much of Nassar's abuse took place. USAG has only just announced that they've stopped using that facility - too little too late, you hypocrites. They are all complicit in the cover up, I want to see heads roll. It was public pressure that eventually closed the ranch, not the useless, spineless hypocrites at USAG. I just can't use words strong enough to condemn the very evil people at USAG.
Q: Why did so many people turn a blind eye to the abuse then?
A: America loves winning and the sport was so dominated by the Soviet Union until the breakup of the USSR - America filled that void left by the Soviets in women's gymnastics whilst China and Japan jointly filled that gap in men's gymnastics. America is now number one in the world of women's gymnastics and by a country mile, like they are just so much better than the rest of the world. In the 2016 Olympics, the US women's gymnastics team beat Russia by more than 8 points - that's an insane margin in a sport where scores go down to three decimal places. To give you an idea of magnitude, in the 2017 world championships men's vault finals, Kenzo Shirai of Japan beat Igor Radivilov of Ukraine by 0.001 - that's the kind margins we're dealing with in gymnastics. So when a training programme can deliver the kind of victory that we saw at the 2016 Olympics, USAG was more than happy to celebrate the success delivered thus far whilst turning a blind eye to the abuse. USAG is big business these days, they attract huge sponsorship from their corporate sponsors and there are many well paid jobs at USAG which depends on them continuing to deliver gold medals at world and Olympic level. Gymnastics in America is big business - it goes beyond the sponsorship deals, there are many elite gymnastics clubs which charge a lot for their training programmes. The celebrity coaches like Valeri Liukin or Liang Chow who have coached recent world and Olympic champions can charge a lot of money for their services. There is an unhealthy relationship between big business and sports in America, unlike other countries where national sports teams are primarily funded by the governments directly. Things have got to change radically if we are to fix the problem.
Q: Do you personally know any of the victims?
A: I am one removed from the victims - I have written for International Gymnast magazine in the past so I am friends with someone important people within the gymnastics-sports journalism community in America and so I have read a lot of the conversations that have gone on social media. One of the journalists would share an article and a lot of the current and former gymnasts who were part of the USA gymnastics programme (including those who have represented USA) would participate in those discussions. It is one thing to read about the news reports off a website like BBC or CNN but it is quite another thing to be able to read those conversations between the gymnasts themselves who have been a part of the programme, some of whom have been treated by Nassar. It gave me quite an insight about the kind of anger there is amongst the women involved in gymnastics in America - the key focus of their discussions has been about the enablers, the people at USAG who turned a blind eye to complaints about Nassar's sexual assaults and allowed him to continue for so long. We want to see the trials continue, we want to see heads roll, we want to see key figures at USAG thrown in jail for having allowed this to happen, for being Nassar's enablers. I want to see Marta Karolyi thrown in jail for a long time.
One of the most impactful victim statements was from former national team member Mattie Larson who said in court, "Marta, did you keep Larry around because he was a good doctor?” Larson asked. “Or did you really keep him around because he let us compete when we were injured and was willing to keep your secrets?” Oh amongst the gymnastics community that I have had the privilege to have an insight into via my journalism contacts, the consensus is that Marta Karolyi is not only complicit in this whole process, but she knew about the abuse and turned a blind eye to it because she was so selfish, she didn't even care what happened to her gymnasts. She's a monster who deserves to share that jail cell with Nassar for the rest of her days on earth - but going beyond that, even if we throw that wretched bitch Marta Karolyi in jail for the rest of her life for her evil deeds, this only raises more questions: why did USAG embrace wicked, evil people like Nassar and the Karolyis, putting them in such powerful positions for so long? Who should take responsibility for this situation and once you start holding the Karolyis to account, there must be hundreds of people who were enablers, who deserve to be in jail. That's the daunting scale of this situation and it must not stop with Nassar's sentencing - this should be just the beginning of a much bigger process to rid USAG of evil, rather than the end of the story. So many enablers have been named, so many - we know who these people are, the gymnastics community knows exactly who they are, we now know people like Nassar are not so powerful you can't go after him: we got Nassar, that's one down and many, many more to go. So many bad people need to be held accountable, we want justice.
Q: Why did so many victims stay silent and for so long?
A: Just look at the wider culture of sexism and misogyny in the USA as well as around the world, where women are not believed when they make a report, when rape victims are told they only have themselves to blame. For crying out aloud, Trump can make outrageously offensive statements like "grab them by the pussy" and still become president - he still managed to get the votes of American women. You see, amongst me and my friends in the gymnastics community, there isn't any doubt that Nassar is 100% guilty and that his enablers are all evil people who need to be put on trial as soon as possible - but if you were to go on some of these news websites where you can leave comments on the news and interact with other readers, it is shocking what some of the American males have been saying about these women who came forward. They used some very derogatory language (which I shan't repeat here) to describe the women, they accused them of either lying, making up the stories to get attention or some even suggested that they willingly consented to sex with Nassar - I can't even begin to unpick the crap they came up with. These were minors, how could they give consent when a grown man abuses them? These men don't care about the truth - they don't care about justice, they have no compassion, no morals. Their misogyny runs so deep they believe what they want to believe and you can't even begin to reason with them. And you thought America was a decent, civilized country? With so many evil American men like that out there who react with such hatred towards the victims, is it any wonder why so few victims dared to speak up? It has been estimated that the women who speak up are but a portion of Nassar's victims, there are many more - hundreds more, even into the thousands, who don't dare to speak up out of fear of the hateful mob on the internet.
Don't forget, many of the victims were minors, they were children at the time Nassar assaulted them. I remember when I met that creepy coach at that competition, the one who invited me to his hotel room - I was just a minor, a teenager then. When you're that young, you can't be expected to know what to do, you can't be given the responsibility to fix something that is so wrong with the system. Adults are meant to be there to protect you: your parents, your coach, your gymnastics federation, all these people should have been there to protect the children, the minors who were too young to fix the problem. That is why what Nassar did is so despicable, he preyed on children, knowing they were unable to speak up and even if they did, they were unlikely to be believed. And even after so many women spoke out, not everyone still believes them, some still actually believe that Nassar is innocent. That's unreal and indicative of how sick America is as a society. Fortunately, judge Rosemarie Aquilina delivered justice and this isn't trial by social media - thank goodness for judge Aquilina who made sure justice was delivered. She a true hero, I am so glad the judge isn't some old white guy.
Q: Why is America so very misogynistic then? Why are women treated with so little respect in 2018?
A: I'm British and you're probably better off asking an American that question. What I can tell you is that many American women hate the current situation, they are frustrated, angry and they want change to come but nothing's going to change. We all felt so much optimism under Obama now it's just doom and gloom when American went to the dark side and elected Trump. If the people at the top, if the president doesn't respect women, then it sends out all the wrong messages. American culture does not respect women the way Western and Northern European culture does - unfortunately that's not always the case: women are not as respected in Southern and especially Eastern Europe. The fact is Trump couldn't have gotten into the White House without the votes and support of women - you get the president, the government and the country you vote for and Nassar was literally doing what Trump said, "grab them by the pussy". I hope these women who voted for Trump realize that they made an awful mistake. It doesn't help of course, that my American friends in the gymnastics community all voted for Clinton and they hate Trump, but they're stuck in America.
Q: So is there something about the culture of gymnastics that needs to change - or is this more a reflection of what is going on in society in general, that women are raped, that vulnerable individuals are being taken advantage of? What more needs to be done in order to prevent abuse from happening? What practical steps need to be taken now?
A: I think the impression that a lot of people get of professional gymnasts is that we are asexual, that sex is not a part of our lives. We eat, sleep, train, compete and study - we don't have relationships, we don't have sex, we are treated like kids because we act like obedient children even when we are like 18 years old. But sure gymnasts have relationship, become sexually active and that's something that people tend to ignore. One of the shocking stories that emerged this week was the rape of Icelandic gymnast Tinna Óðinsdóttir at a competition in Germany in 2016 - now I've been to loads of gymnastics competitions over the years and yeah, I can imagine this kind of thing taking place. These gymnasts are away from home, the competition is over, their parents are not around and the coaches think okay, I don't need to keep an eye on you. It's horrific what happened to her and I hope she gets justice, I hope she gets the help and support she needs. She is very brave in speaking out, my heart goes out to her. I can look back upon my own experience growing up as a gymnast and think about the number of times things could have gone wrong and realize that I was so very lucky I was able to meet so many good, kind people along the way who took care of me rather than exploited my vulnerability.
Q: Why were you so vulnerable?
A: To begin with, I am autistic, my parents are autistic, it runs in my family, we have the autism gene over three generations. I was always a very awkward child who had no friends, just as my gymnastics flourished, I didn't get along with the people at my school's gymnastics club and was subjected the a lot of bullying - I was ostracized for a number of reasons, mostly because I took gymnastics a lot more seriously than my team mates and they couldn't stand the fact that I was improving a lot more quickly. I was training like 6 or 7 times a week whilst they barely put in half of that, so of course you reap what you sow in a sport like that. The atmosphere was really toxic, you can't say, "oh they are just kids" - I think adults have a greater sense of self-awareness and they know where the line is, but kids and teenagers can be really awful because they have no boundaries, they will go out of their way to make life hell for someone if they get jealous of them or hate them for whatever reason. In recent years, I became very good friends with a Hungarian diver who used to represent Hungary in diving, she was at one time the national champion there too - different sport, same toxic environment. The other divers hated her and bullied her because she was better and they were jealous. I think we're such good friends today because we found someone who endured the same awful, toxic environment and it's not the kind of empathy you can find unless the other person understands exactly what kind of hell you had been through.
Imagine growing up in that kind of really toxic environment, as a child, as a teenager and having to cope with all that on your own with no one to turn to - I didn't dare tell my parents out of fear that they would just pull the plug on my gymnastics. My parents are so autistic, you can't expect them to understand the complexities of issues like that, they just can't - it's like explaining algebra to a cat, you can't get through to them no matter how you try. I was lucky when I was able to move to the national training center at the age of 14, away from the toxic environment at my school to train. Things improved but I was still very much the quiet gymnast who trained long hours without talking. There was a group of older male gymnasts who eventually retired from the sport when I was about 17 or 18 - one by one, they completed their further education, got full time jobs and left gymnastics. The coaches then assembled a new group of younger male gymnasts to be the next generation, so I was training with kids who were like 12 years old whilst I was 18 to 21 years old at the national training center. Was it weird that my best friends were so much younger than me? I suppose but autistic kids are always a few years behind their peers when it comes to social skills and mental age: academically I was a straight-As scholar, I was a brilliant gymnast and national champion but socially, well, I found solace in training with a bunch of kids younger than me knowing that they couldn't bully me my teammates once did when I was younger.
By the time I was like 20, 21 - I was built like a strong gymnast, a young man who looked like an adult but I probably had the mental age of like a 15 year old and the social skills of a 12 year old. I wasn't prepared to deal with adults even though people treated me like one and expected me to function like one. That was why I felt so at home, so safe, training in the company of much, much younger gymnasts who were also much younger. At that age, you're expected to act and function like an adult, but in the gym, you could be like a child again and just listen to your coach. Normal teenagers do things like go to parties, hang out with their friends, go to the mall or the movies together - that's how they learned to develop those important social skills. I actually didn't do any of that, for me it was school or gymnastics and there was nothing else beyond that which could have stretched me socially, to teach me how to make friends, get along with my peers. Gymnastics can be a very lonely sport: when you train your routines, you need to focus, you don't chat, you don't think about the world outside the gym - you need to focus all your energy and thoughts on what you're training. Whenever the outside world scared me, whenever I had any problems, I would retreat to my safe space and that was the gym where I knew I could mentally block out the world, shut out anyone who was bothering me and just train. Luckily, I did a lot of growing up when I was in the army and at university. I still train four times a week at my local gymnastics club.
Gymnasts constantly seek approval, it's a part of our sport: we are judged. The winner is the gymnast who is given the top scores: thus we are eager to please and nowadays, you learn a new skill, you film it and put it on Instagram and instantly people like it, leave comments and great - you can get that approval from strangers from halfway around the world you have never ever met. How cool is that? That's why I am really liking Instagram right now and am posting clips from my training sessions on Instagram. But back in the 1990s, I didn't even have a mobile phone and video cameras were rare - so we were constantly dependent on our coaches and team mates for approval. I wasn't getting any love or approval from my parents at home - they never understood why I did gymnastics. Mind you, it wasn't just gymnastics, they didn't understand anything I did from age of like 13 or 14 and I was never close to them anyway. We got to the situation where I had far more respect for my coaches than my own parents, I craved for my coach's approval because I knew I could earn it, I knew if I did well he would praise me whilst I was never ever going to get that from my own parents. If someone like Nassar or that creepy coach mentioned earlier had been there to exploit my desperate desire for approval, then yeah - anyone could have exploited my vulnerability. So when I read about the toxic environment Nassar's victims were in, yeah I can see how that created so much vulnerability amongst the gymnasts to allow Nassar get away with this for so long. This is nothing new in America - this is painfully similar to the Penn State child sex abuse scandal.
Q: The word 'grooming' was used a lot in the Nassar case, what does that mean in this context?
A: As you can see, there is a lot of vulnerability when it comes to young gymnasts - it tends to attract a certain kind of young people who are very driven, very determined, but within that environment, you also get gymnasts who become very docile, very obedient and do as they are told. Coaches tend to favour those gymnasts who never talk back, who never argue, who never protest because they are just so much easier to teach; there are no discipline issues, the coach can say, "do this ten times" and trust that the gymnast will do it. You're expecting children at the age of like 9 or 10 to have the kind of discipline that you wouldn't even expect of a normal adult. It can go too far - there are stories of gymnasts who then become so scared of their coaches they don't even dare speak up if they have an injury during training. There was that famous story of Nadia Comaneci who was once training when she ran a high fever and the coaches only realized when they actually physically supported her in a skill and realized she was burning up. There is a huge difference between say a 25 year old going through that process and a 9 year old going through that process: the 9 year old doesn't have the maturity to deal with such a situation yet they are effectively training like professional athletes, achieving far more at that age than a lot of adults out there. You need to train like that as a child to become a champion.
Gymnasts at that age can become very quiet, very insecure, they crave approval from their coaches and that validation becomes totally associated with winning the next gold medal at the next competition so when they fail to deliver at the competitions, it can crush their spirits and they just don't have the emotional maturity to deal with that at that age, even if they have the discipline to train like adults. Even if they feel disappointment, anger, fear or pain, gymnasts are trained to bottle up their feelings and not show weakness, but they are human after all. Of course they need love and reassurance. Someone like Nassar would then place himself in a position of trust and win these gymnasts over - he would start out as their friend, becoming the person they would confide in, he would win their trust: someone like that may be the only person the gymnast may open up to, but when the only person the gymnast trusts is a sexual predator who is willing to do anything to sexually exploit that child, that's when you have a situation where someone like Nassar was able to get away with what he did. It makes me so angry because I was in that position where nobody really cared if I was vulnerable or emotionally stable: all my parents and coaches cared about was if I kept my mouth shut and did as I was told at that age. Grooming can only happen when vulnerable children are in a position like that - normal, well-adjusted kids who have healthy relationships with their families, with their coaches and teachers will not be groomed. Sexual predators like Nassar would target the most vulnerable kids knowing that they would easily submit to his grooming.
Q: What do you think will happen next?
A: Well there's a huge gulf between what many of us would like to happen and what may actually happen. There are so many people from within the gymnastics community who want to see heads roll, so many of us want to see the heads at Michigan State University, USAG and USOC thrown in jail for having ignored so many warning signs, putting profit before the welfare of the gymnasts. We also want to see a thorough investigation into other sports as well - if there is one Larry Nassar who was caught, how many more are there out there, exploiting vulnerable young people? But what will actually happen is probably that the story will die down over the next few weeks and months, like the whole Grenfell Tower fire story in London. When it first happened, there was so much public anger, there were protests in the streets and the government made so many promises - it has been 6 months and has anything happened? Absolutely nothing. None of the people responsible have been arrested and thrown in jail, the media has moved on. I can still see the burnt out Grenfell Tower from the train I take to work - it's still there, as a gruesome reminder that so many people died and they're not going to get any justice. Will this go down the same route? It is a possibility of course but there are some variables.
This is America we're talking about - there have already been many lawsuits brought against MSU and USAG over the Nassar case and look, Nassar is already in jail, he has been sentenced. It's hard for MSU or USAG to claim they have no responsibility over what has happened and there will be a many more lawsuits and settlements. This is a process that can go on for months, even years as MSU and USAG face a record number of lawsuits from Nassar's victims - MSU already faces 144 lawsuits (this number is expected to grow) relating to Nassar: that could become a story in itself and it sounds awful that we're focusing on the payouts and settlements rather than the pain of the victims, but you need to feed the media something new, a new development, a new twist to the story in order to keep it in the headlines. Say if USAG or MSU goes bust under the weight of so many lawsuits and settlements, then yeah that'll be a huge story that will keep the story alive and more pressure on these organizations. Or if they uncover yet another predator who operated like Nassar, then that will keep the story alive too. If you want a fire to keep burning, you have to keep feeding it fuel: the same principle applies to a story like that where public pressure is crucial in holding these organisations to account otherwise, it will just end up much the same way as the Grenfell Tower fire. The victims are still there you know, but nobody cares anymore - I really don't want this to happen in this case. I'm a lifelong gymnast, this is my community.
Q: This may be a rhetorical question, but Nassar may be behind bars now, but do you think this is happening elsewhere, in other countries? Maybe in other sports apart from gymnastics? Or is this an isolated case?
A: Well obviously, yes to both questions. Yes if this can happen in America, it definitely can happen in other countries and at MSU, Nassar was the rowing team's doctor as well, so we're only just scratching the surface now. These universities, these sports organisations and federations have had a wake up call to take a look at what the hell is happening and hopefully, this is the beginning of a purge of the evil people who put medals ahead of the welfare of the young athletes. I shudder to think what else may be uncovered and revealed in the coming weeks. Watch this space, this is far from over.
Q: What can parents of gymnasts do, if they are concerned over what happened?
A: The first thing to do is to make sure you have a decent relationship with your child - I didn't dare go to my parents with my problems because I didn't trust them. Sigh, I know it sounds incredibly mean of me to say this, but even from a young age, like when I was a child, I knew something was wrong with them. Like they weren't the same as other normal parents, now I realize they're autistic. As an adult, with the benefit of hindsight, yeah now I understand what was going on - but imagine what it was like for me as a child back then. Asian parents demand unconditional respect and obedience, they don't understand that respect and even basic trust is earned. And as an Asian child, if you don't give your parents unconditional respect and obedience, if you don't trust your parents, then you're the evil child who is at fault. Perhaps what I am stating is obvious: if your child is bullied at school, if your child is abused or raped, you must create the kind of trust within your relationship whereby your child should feel safe enough to confide in you and tell you the truth - I never had that. I just plain didn't trust my parents because of their autistic behaviour, I feared them, they were irrational and had bad tempers, they never listened to a word I said anyway and I doubted that they would believe me if I went to them with anything like that. What kind of relationships with their parents did the victims of Nassar have? I do know what it is like to feel you just can't trust your own parents. It is a very real situation for children to find themselves in.
I can only write so much about this story, I shall end here - please let me know what you think. Many thanks for reading.
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