Gymnast Aly Raisman says she was sexually abused by USA team doctor
In an interview with 60 Minutes that will be released on Sunday, Aly Raisman, an Olympic gold medal-winning gymnast, revealed that she was sexually abused by Dr. Laurence Nassar.
Nassar is the the former U.S. women’s national gymnastics team doctor who has been accused of sexual assault by more than 100 women. Raisman said Nassar began treating her when she was 15 years old, and, like many other victims, she had kept quiet about the abuse.
“Why are we looking at why didn’t the girls speak up?” she says during a preview clip of the interview. “Why not look at what about the culture? What did USA Gymnastics do, and Larry Nassar do, to manipulate these girls so much that they are so afraid to speak up?”
Raisman discusses the experience in Fierce, her new memoir that is currently available for pre-order on Amazon.
Earlier this year, when a reporter asked Raisman about the gymnastics abuse scandal, she called Nassar a “monster” but didn’t address specifically whether she, herself, had been abused. Her only comment at the time was “I feel like there’s a lot of articles about it, but nobody has said, ‘This is horrible, this is what we’re doing to change.’”
Like her fellow London 2012 teammate McKayla Maroney, who has also recently come forward with allegations of abuse, Raisman is now determined to be an advocate for change in a sport that allowed the sexual assault of teenagers to go unchecked for so many years.
“I’m really upset because I care a lot, when I see these young girls that come up to me, and they ask for pictures or autographs, whatever it is, every time I look at them, every time I see them smiling, I just think I just want to create change so that they never, ever have to go through this,” she said.
Nassar is currently awaiting two separate trials in the state of Michigan, one for 23 counts of criminal sexual conduct and another for child pornography charges.
