Aly Raisman Opens Up About Alleged Sexual Abuse by Former Team Doctor
Six-time Olympic medalist and Team USA gymnastics captain Aly Raisman recently came forward with allegations of sexual assault against Larry Nassar, a former USA Gymnastics team doctor. In a Today Show interview Monday and in a passage from her upcoming memoir, she opened up about the confusion she experienced after the alleged assaults, which she says began at 15—and her struggle to come forward after her realization she’d been abused.
“It wasn’t until I started seeing other doctors and athletic trainers that I began to realize that their methods were far different from Larry’s,” Raisman wrote in her memoir, Fierce, set to be released on Tuesday and excerpted on Monday by People.
She wrote that she would often go in for bodywork with these other trainers and doctors. With them, “towels were draped over my hips and buttocks for privacy and to ensure that there was no inappropriate skin-to-skin contact.” Raisman added that other coaches and trainers “never, ever crossed any lines” when they worked with her.
Raisman continued in her memoir: “There was never a moment when their methods made me uncomfortable. It was different with Larry. I would lie on the table, my hands involuntarily balling themselves into fists as his ungloved hands worked their way under my clothing. ‘Treatment sessions’ with him always made me feel tense and uncomfortable.”
The gymnast wrote that she would simply “grit” her teeth and bear it, thinking she was alone. She’d later learn she was far from the only one.
“Over the years, among the girls who were invited to camps, there was some talk of Larry and his ‘treatment methods.’ Most of us thought the way he touched us was weird. But he did it to so many of us that we assumed, blindly, that he must know something we didn’t,” she wrote.
“I want people to know that I really didn’t know what was happening to me,” Raisman said on the “Today* show” Monday. “He was a doctor and he told me that his treatment would help heal all of my injuries. He was such a master manipulator, and I think that’s what’s important for people to understand is that these monsters are so good at manipulating you so you’re so brainwashed to think—I thought he was so nice.”
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She told People on Monday that she’d struggled to come out with her allegations. “I was just so scared and nervous about what people were going to think. I was a textbook victim, brainwashed to believe I was fine.”
She added on “60 Minutes” that she chose to speak out now because she wants others to learn that “just because someone is nice to you, and just because everyone is saying they are the best person, it does not make it OK for them to ever make you uncomfortable, ever.”
At least 140 women are suing Nassar for sexual abuse, and a 2016 investigation found that at least 368 gymnasts had been sexually abused while working for USA Gymnastics. In July, Nassar pleaded guilty to three child pornography charges in federal court. He is currently in jail and is scheduled to be sentenced on December 7.
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