Ex-U.S. Gymnast Charmaine Carnes revisits horrific history of sexual abuse

RIO DE JANEIRO >> A hauntingly familiar feeling came over Charmaine Caes on Thursday.

In the moing news, Caes was confronted with a subject she knows all too well: gymnastic coaches sexually abusing young athletes.

“My heart rate instantly started racing up,” she said, “and there was this feeling of anxiety. It was just heartbreaking.”

A report that USA Gymnastics chief executive and his predecessor repeatedly failed to inform authorities of allegations of sexual abuse by coaches has upstaged the opening weekend of an Olympic Games whose first week had been expected to be dominated by a series of gold medal performances by Texas teenager Simone Biles and the U.S. women.

USA Gymnastics CEO Steve Pey and former USAG head Robert Colarossi did not follow up on reports of sexual abuse, enabling some coaches to continue to abuse underage athletes for years, according to a report by the Indianapolis Star.

U.S. Olympic Committee CEO Scott Blackmun said the organization has no plans to investigate the allegations raised against Pey, Colarossi and USAG and would not comment on whether Pey should resign if the allegations are substantiated.

“We obviously leaed about this story yesterday like everybody else,” Blackmun said Friday. “We do not intend to investigate. We couldn’t possibly investigate allegations of misconduct in 47 different (national goveing bodies). We do have what I think is a pretty state of the art policy regarding abuse and misconduct, not just sexual misconduct, so we will watch those proceedings.”

Caes, however, said Pey has set the tone for a culture of abuse within American gymnastics and needs to resign. Caes told the Orange County Register in 2011 she was sexually abused by U.S. national team coach Doug Boger starting when she was an 8 or 9-year old gymnast training with Boger in Pasadena. The abuse continued into her teens, Caes said.

A total of 10 former gymnasts told the Register that Boger sexually or physically abused them. Caes and Boger’s other victims said Pey and USA Gymnastics were slow to respond to their charges and then failed to follow up on Boger after he was baed from the sport in 2010, just months after being named USAG’s national coach of the year and coaching Team USA in the World Championships. Even after he was baed, Boger continued to work with young gymnasts at a Colorado Springs gym 10 minutes from the USOC’s headquarters. The owner of the gym was convicted of sexual abuse in Oregon in 1987.

Boger was eventually fired after the publication the Register’s investigative series that also led to 1984 U.S. Olympic team coach Don Peters receiving a lifetime ban from the sport for sexual misconduct with three teenage gymnasts.

“(Pey) has been very ineffective at getting to the bottom of this issue in USA Gymnastics,” Caes said in a telephone interview. “It’s very similar to the Catholic Church where priests knew they could sexually abuse without fearing the church would do anything. Coaches under USA Gymnastics know they can get away with sexual abuse.

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“Steve Pey set the tone for that culture and he needs to be held accountable for the culture he set.”

Pey did not address specific cases raised by the Star’s reporting in a statement released Friday.

“As the CEO of USA Gymnastics, it is heartbreaking and unacceptable for a young person to have the intolerable burden that results from being a victim of sexual misconduct,” Pey said. “We share the outrage that sexual assault victims and their families feel. This is why USA Gymnastics has implemented Safe Sport training and created educational materials that encourage members to contact law enforcement first when reporting incidents of abuse. We will continue to work with the USOC and the National Center for Safe Sport, along with our clubs, parents, and athletes to protect every child.”

Caes said she was particularly upset and frustrated by one of the allegations raised in the Star report. USAG officials did not report to police 2011 detailed allegations that Marvin Sharp, the organization’s national women’s coach of the year in 2010, had inappropriately touched minors. It was only after USAG were confronted with complaints four years later of Sharp touching a 12-year-old gymnast’s vagina and taking sexually explicit photos of her that the organization reported Sharp to police.

The initial allegations against Sharp, who committed suicide in jail last year, came around the same time Caes and her former teammates and former gymnasts at SCATS Gymnastics, the world renown Huntington Beach training facility, were pressuring USAG to address the Boger and Peters cases.

“(USAG) has a moral and ethical responsibility not to cover for child molestors,” Caes said.