While the tears were flowing, Simone Biles, Aly Raisman, and McKayla Maroney spoke to Live TV about the abuse she and other American tourists experienced.
Biles, one of the most successful athletes of all time in the course of the Olympic Games, testified in Congress about the abuses committed by Larry Nassar when he was a doctor for the national championships team in the USA.
Congress is considering whether more people should be held responsible for Nassar’s ability to abuse women and children for years.
“I don’t want anyone else to experience the horrors that I and hundreds of others experienced and continue to experience after Larry Nasser’s abuse,” Biles told Congress. NBC.
She is now asking for an investigation by the FBI, the Gymnastics Federation, and the US Olympic Committee.
Talk to the FBI in 2015
Biles is supported by McKayla Maroney. The 25-year-old gave Congress a detailed account of the abuse she was subjected to.
– The first thing Larry Nassar said to me was that I should wear shorts without panties, because it would be easier for him to work with me. Within minutes, Maroney said, his fingers entered my vagina.
She told the FBI about this episode in a conversation early in 2015.
Maroney also provided detailed descriptions of other episodes, for example when Nassar allegedly gave her sleeping pills during a trip to Tokyo “so he could work with me later that night”.
That night I was naked and alone with him on top of me. He abused me for hours. I told the FBI that I thought I was going to die that night because I never imagined he would let me go. But he did.
Maroney was only 15 years old when she became the world champion in Tokyo in 2011. She really gave herself up as a top athlete when she was 20 years old.
Maroney believes that the FBI not only played down her accusations, but also falsified her testimony.
– On a silver platter for children’s favourites
Aly Raisman, who also won a World Cup and Olympic gold, said for her part that it took 14 months before the FBI took the trouble to interview her, and that the agency – when they first spoke to her – left her feeling that way. That abuse against her wasn’t a big deal.
She believes that the FBI, the Gymnastics Association, and the Olympic Committee quietly let Nassar escape, and that about a hundred people were sexually assaulted by him.
It was as if they were serving innocent children on a silver platter to a pedophile, said Raisman, who also became a world champion when he was 16 years old.
Simone Biles believes the FBI has closed its eyes.
We suffered and had to continue to suffer because no one in the FBI, the Gymnastics Association, or the Olympic Committee did what was necessary to protect us. We were frustrated and deserved the answers,” said the 24-year-old, who won his first World Cup gold at just 16 years old.
At least 265 women and girls believe they were abused by Larry Nassar. In 2017, he pleaded guilty to offending ten of them. He is currently serving a sentence of up to 175 years in prison.
Nassar is where he belongs, but those who let him keep also deserve accountability. If they don’t, I’m convinced this will happen again against other Olympic athletes in the future, says Beals, who has so far won 25 World Cup and seven Olympic medals in his gymnastics career.
– horrific picture
The Justice Department’s inspector general said in a report in July that the FBI had mishandled the case against Nassar.
Justice Committee Chairman Dick Durbin said in his opening statement that the report painted a “horrific picture of FBI incompetence and lack of accountability.”
Although Maroney and other practitioners spoke to the FBI about the abuse as early as 2015, Larry Nassar continued to run tournaments at Michigan State University until September 2016.
He was the national team doctor from 1996 to 2014.
FBI Director Christopher Wray, who was not head of the agency when this happened, told Congress that an FBI agent who failed to investigate the allegations against Nassar was recently fired.
Nobody should be protected
When Raisman was asked what she wanted now, she replied that it was important to independently investigate the links between the FBI, the gymnastics federation, and the Olympic Committee.
Nobody should be protected. Personally, she replied, I would like the three organizations to undergo a thorough investigation.
Simon Biles added: – We want to prosecute them as much as possible, because they must be held accountable.
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