Simone Biles, American gymnasts give harrowing testimony over sexual abuse

Simone Biles and fellow Olympic gymnasts have slammed authorities while testifying about the shocking sexual abuse they endured.

US gymnasts Simone Biles, McKayla Maroney, Aly Raisman and Maggie Nichols excoriated USA Gymnastics, the US Olympic Committee and the FBI in powerful Senate testimony for failing to take immediate action over sexual abuse allegations against team doctor Larry Nassar.

“We have been failed and we deserve answers,” said the 24-year-old Biles, a seven-time Olympic medallist and the most decorated gymnast in world championships history.

While condemning the inaction of the FBI, the gymnasts had harsh words for the leadership of USA Gymnastics and the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee (USOPC). Biles accused the FBI of turning a “blind eye” to what was happening.

“We suffered and continue to suffer because no one at the FBI, USAG or USOPC did what was necessary to protect us,” Biles said.

“I blame Larry Nassar and I also blame an entire system that enabled and perpetrated his abuse.

“We suffered and continue to suffer, because no one at FBI, USAG, or the USOPC did what was necessary to protect us. We have been failed, and we deserve answers.

“Nassar is where he belongs, but those who enabled him deserve to be held accountable. If they are not, I am convinced that this will continue to happen to others across Olympic sports.”

Simone Biles says there are more parties to blame than Larry Nassar. (Photo: Saul Loeb/AFP)

Maroney, who won a team gold medal at the 2012 London Olympics, said she reported the abuse by USA Gymnastics doctor Nassar to the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 2015.

“They allowed a child molester to go free for more than a year,” the 25-year-old Maroney told the Senate Judiciary Committee. “They had legal, legitimate evidence of child abuse and did nothing.”

Maroney lashed the FBI for failing to protect Nassar’s victims and making “entirely false claims about what I said” when she was forced to recount her ordeal to authorities — which she did in harrowing detail.

“I told him (the FBI officer) that the first thing Larry Nassar ever said to me was to change into shorts with no underwear because that would make it easier for him to work on me,” Maroney said in Senate testimony.

“I then told the FBI about Tokyo. The day he gave me a sleeping pill for the plane ride to then work on me later that night. That evening, I was naked, completely alone with him on top of me molesting me for hours. I told them I thought I was going to die that night. Because there was no way that he would let me go. But he did.

“I told them I walked the halls of Tokyo hotel at 2am. At only 15-years-old, I began crying at the memory over the phone, and there was just dead silence. I was so shocked at the agent’s silence and disregard for my trauma. After that minute of silence he asked, ‘Is that all?’

“Those words in itself was one of the worst moments of this entire process for me, to have my abuse be minimised and disregarded by the people who were supposed to protect me. Just to feel like my abuse was not enough. But the truth is my abuse was enough. And they wanted to cover it up.”

(L-R) Aly Raisman, Simone Biles, McKayla Maroney and Maggie Nichols are standing up for justice. (Photo by Saul Loeb/AFP).

Nassar, 58, is serving a life sentence after pleading guilty in late 2017 and early 2018 to sexually assaulting women and girls while working as a sports medicine doctor at USA Gymnastics and Michigan State University (MSU).

Hundreds of women — including Olympians, gymnasts and collegiate athletes — have accused Nassar of sexually abusing them over the course of his more than two-decade career.

Biles, Maroney, Raisman and Nichols were invited to testify before the Senate committee about the “FBI’s dereliction of duty in the Nassar case”.

Nichols, who won a gold medal at the 2015 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships, said she reported Nassar’s abuse to USA Gymnastics leadership in 2015.

“I am haunted by the fact that even after I reported my abuse so many women and girls had to suffer at the hands of Larry Nassar,” Nichols said.

“USA Gymnastics and the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee have all betrayed me and those who were abused by Larry Nassar.”

Raisman said it “disgusts me” they are still having to fight for answers and justice years after allegations were first made.

“Being here today is taking everything I have,” she said. “My main concern is I hope I have the energy to just walk out of here. I don’t think people realise how much it affects us.”

Larry Nassar was given a life sentence. (Photo by Rena Laverty/AFP)

FBI Director Christopher Wray and Michael Horowitz, the Justice Department Inspector General, are scheduled to testify before the Senate panel in a separate session.

Horowitz’s office was the author of a damning report published in July that looked into the FBI’s handling of accusations against Nassar.

It found that despite the “extraordinarily serious nature of the allegations”, senior officials in the Indianapolis Field Office of the FBI failed to respond with the “utmost seriousness and urgency that they deserved”.

USA Gymnastics reported Nassar to the FBI in July 2015, but he continued to see patients at MSU until a newspaper exposed him in September 2016.

With AFP