Olympic star Raisman files suit against USOC, USA Gymnastics

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Olympic star Raisman files suit against USOC, USA Gymnastics

2018-03-03 17:35 Last Updated At：17:36

Aly Raisman spent months urging the U.S. Olympic Committee and USA Gymnastics to get serious about taking a long hard look into how Larry Nassar's abusive conduct was allowed to run unchecked for so long.

Frustrated by what she considers a lack of progress, the six-time Olympic medalist is hoping she can get some answers in court.

Raisman has filed a lawsuit against both organizations, claiming they "knew or should have known" about abusive patterns Nassar, a disgraced former national team doctor now in prison for sexually abusing young athletes.

Raisman filed the lawsuit in California on Wednesday. The filing alleges negligence by the USOC and USA Gymnastics for failing to make sure appropriate protocols were followed in regards to monitoring Larry Nassar. Nassar, who is named as a co-defendant in the lawsuit, is serving decades in prison for molesting some of the sport's top athletes and others as well as child pornography crimes.

The 23-year-old Raisman, captain for both the gold-medal winning 2012 and 2016 U.S. women's Olympic gymnastics teams, says she was abused by Nassar in multiple locations beginning in 2010, including at the U.S. national team training facility at the Karolyi Ranch training center in Texas and the 2012 Games in London. Raisman said she initially felt she was receiving medically necessary treatment by Nassar before realizing it was abuse. She battled shame, guilt and depression in the aftermath, Raisman said.

Nassar spent nearly three decades at USA Gymnastics before being fired in 2015 after complaints about his behavior. He continued to work at Michigan State University through the fall of 2016 before being hit with federal charges. Raisman said the USOC and USA Gymnastics allowed Nassar to continue abusing athletes by not telling the university about the conduct that led them to fire him.

USA Gymnastics and the USOC broke their stated mandates to protect children in their programs by not revealing Nassar's past misconduct to athletes and their parents or guardians, the lawsuit said.

Raisman joins a list of more than 100 civil actions filed against Nassar and USA Gymnastics. McKayla Maroney, an Olympic teammate of Raisman's in 2012, named the USOC as a co-defendant in a lawsuit she filed last December.

Raisman filed her lawsuit the same day that roughly 115 additional plaintiffs, including a current University of Michigan male gymnast, joined a federal suit against Michigan State University, USA Gymnastics and others. Jacob Moore, a freshman, said he was treated by Nassar multiple times and described a 2016 incident in which Nassar administered acupuncture in and around Moore's genitalia after pulling down Moore's pants in front of a female gymnast who was a minor. The suit in Michigan now has more than 250 plaintiffs.

USA Gymnastics said in a statement Friday it is doing "doing everything we can to prevent this from happening again by making bold decisions and holding ourselves to the highest standards of care." The USOC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Raisman, who has become a vocal critic of both organizations after initially revealing the abuse in her autobiography released last fall, did not plan to go to court but says she felt compelled to press forward because she believes USA Gymnastics and the USOC are not making a sincere effort to "properly address the problem."

"I refuse to wait any longer for these organizations to do the right thing," Raisman said in a statement. "It is my hope that the legal process will hold them accountable and enable the change that is so desperately needed."

The USOC is conducting an independent review of when former CEO Scott Blackmun and others learned the details about abuse cases at USA Gymnastics and whether they responded appropriately. Blackmun stepped down earlier this week to deal with prostate cancer, though Raisman, several high-profile gymnasts and two U.S. Senators had been calling for his ouster for weeks.

USA Gymnastics has undergone a massive overhaul in the last year. Former president Steve Penny, named as a co-defendant in Raisman's lawsuit, resigned last March. Longtime chairman of the board Paul Parilla, another co-defendant in the suit, and the rest of the board stepped down in January under heavy pressure from the USOC. USA Gymnastics also ended its relationship with the Karolyi Ranch in January and is currently searching for a new training center.

Raisman doesn't believe either organization is going far enough fast enough for future generations of athletes.

"It has become painfully clear that these organizations have no intention of properly addressing this problem," Raisman said. "After all this time, they remain unwilling to conduct a full investigation, and without a solid understanding of how this happened, it is delusional to think sufficient changes can be implemented."

Raisman's lawsuit claims both organizations focused on medals instead of the well-being of the athletes, a model that allowed Nassar's behavior to go unchecked for years.

The lawsuit says the USOC "had a culture and atmosphere that conceals known and suspected sexual abusers, which transcends all policies and procedures that are set-in place." Raisman believes the USOC ignored its own mandates "to protect its reputation and blind itself to known abusers within the ranks of the NGBs (National Governing Bodies) for which it is responsible."

Paris prepares for 100-day countdown to the Olympics. It wants to rekindle love for the Games

2024-04-17 16:43 Last Updated At：23:01

PARIS (AP) — In Paris' outskirts, a bright-eyed young girl is eager for the Olympic and Paralympic Games to end.

That's because the swimming club where 10-year-old Lyla Kebbi trains will inherit an Olympic pool. It will be dismantled after the Games and trucked from the Olympic race venue in Paris' high-rise business district to Sevran, a Paris-area town with less glitter and wealth. There, the pieces will be bolted back together and — voila ! — Kebbi and her swim team will have a new Olympic-sized pool to splash around in.

“It’s incredible !” she says. “I hope it’s going to bring us luck," adds her mother, Nora.

In 100 days as of Wednesday, the Paris Olympics will kick off with a wildly ambitious waterborne opening ceremony. But the first Games in a century in France’s capital won't be judged for spectacle alone. Another yardstick will be their impact on disadvantaged Paris suburbs, away from the city-center landmarks that are hosting much of the action.

By promising socially positive and also less polluting and less wasteful Olympics, the city synonymous with romance is also setting itself the high bar of making future Games generally more desirable.

Critics question their value for a world grappling with climate warming and other emergencies. Potential host cities became so Games-averse that Paris and Los Angeles were the only remaining candidates in 2017 when the International Olympic Committee selected them for 2024 and 2028, respectively.

After scandals and the $13 billion cost of the pandemic-delayed Tokyo Games in 2021, unfulfilled promises of beneficial change for host Rio de Janeiro in 2016 and the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi tarnished by Russian doping and President Vladimir Putin's subsequent land grabs in Ukraine, the Switzerland-based IOC has mountains of skepticism to dispel.

Virtuous Summer Games in Paris could help the long-term survival of the IOC’s mega-event.

The idea that the July 26-Aug. 11 Games and Aug. 28-Sept. 8 Paralympics should benefit disadvantaged communities in the Seine-Saint-Denis region northeast of Paris was built from the outset into the city's plans.

Seine-Saint-Denis is mainland France’s poorest region. Thanks to generations of immigration, it also is vibrantly diverse, counting 130 nationalities and more than 170 languages spoken by its 1.6 million inhabitants. For Seine-Saint-Denis kids facing racial discrimination and other barriers, sports are sometimes a route out. World Cup winner Kylian Mbappé honed his silky soccer skills as a boy in the Seine-Saint-Denis town of Bondy.

Once heavily industrialized, Seine-Saint-Denis became grim and scary in parts after many jobs were lost. Rioting rocked its streets in 2005 and again last year. Members of an Islamic extremist cell that killed 130 people in the French capital in 2015 hid after the carnage in an apartment in the town of Saint-Denis and were killed in a shootout with heavily armed SWAT teams. That drama unfolded just a 15-minute walk from the Olympic stadium that will host track and field and rugby and the closing ceremonies.

Concretely, the Games will leave a legacy of new and refurbished sports infrastructure in Seine-Saint-Denis, although critics say the investment still isn't enough to catch it up with better equipped, more prosperous regions.

Mamitiana Rabarijaona grew up close to the Olympic stadium, built originally for the 1998 soccer World Cup. He says it didn't provide much of a boost for Seine-Saint-Denis residents. He believes the Olympics will be “a big party" and he will be among 45,000 volunteers who'll be helping. But he is not expecting Olympic-related investments to magically erase Seine-Saint-Denis' many difficulties.

“It's like lifting the carpet and brushing the dust underneath,” he said. “It doesn't make it go away.”

Seine-Saint-Denis got the new Olympic village that will become housing and offices when the 10,500 Olympians and 4,400 Paralympians have left. It also is home to the Games' only purpose-built competition venue, an aquatics center for diving, water polo and artistic swimming events. Other competition venues already existed, were previously planned or will be temporary.

"We really were driven by the ambition of sobriety and above all not to build sports facilities that aren’t needed and which will have no reason to exist after the Games,” Marie Barsacq, the organizing committee's legacy director, said in an interview.

The hand-me-down 50-meter pool for Sevran will be a significant upgrade. The Seine-Saint-Denis town of 51,000 people was whacked by factory closures in the 1990s. Its existing 25-meter pool is nearly 50 years old.

Other Seine-Saint-Denis towns are also getting new or renovated pools — particularly welcome for the region's children, because only half of them can swim.

“The ambition for these Olympic Games ... is that they benefit everyone and for the longest time possible,” said Sevran Mayor Stéphane Blanchet. The Olympics, Blanchet said, can't “carry on just passing though and then moving on without thinking about tomorrow.”

At close to 9 billion euros ($9.7 billion), more than half from sponsors, ticket sales and other non-public funding, Paris' expenses so far are less than for the last three Summer Games in Tokyo, Rio and London in 2012.

Including policing and transport costs, the portion of the bill for French taxpayers is likely to be around 3 billion euros ($3.25 billon), France's body for auditing public funds said in its most recent study in July.

Security remains a challenge for the city repeatedly hit by deadly extremist violence. The government downsized ambitions to have 600,000 people lining the River Seine for the opening ceremony. Citing the risk of attacks, it shelved a promise that anyone could apply for hundreds of thousands of free tickets. Instead, the 326,000 spectators will either be paying ticket-holders or have been invited.

Privacy advocates are critical of video surveillance technology being deployed to spot security threats. Campaigners for the homeless are concerned that they will be swept off streets. Many Parisians plan to leave, to avoid the disruptions or to rent their homes to the expected 15 million visitors. With trade unions pushing for Olympic bonuses, strikes are also possible.

And all this against an inflammable backdrop of geopolitical crises including but not limited to the Israel-Hamas war and Russia's invasion of Ukraine. As a consequence, the IOC isn't allowing athletes from Russia and ally Belarus to parade with other Olympians at the opening ceremony.

Still, Olympics fans expect big things of Paris. They include Ayaovi Atindehou, a 32-year-old trainee doctor from Togo studying in France. The Olympic volunteer believes the Games can bridge divisions, even if just temporarily.

“The whole world without racial differences, ethnic differences, religious differences. We will be all together, shouting, celebrating," he said. “We need the Olympic Games."

AP Olympics coverage: https://apnews.com/hub/2024-paris-olympic-games