Figure skater Ashley Wagner says she was sexually assaulted at 17 by another skater
Saying she wants "kids to be able to stay kids" in figure skating, Olympian Ashley Wagner became the latest female athlete to talk about having been sexually assaulted, alleging that John Coughlin kissed and groped her when she was 17 in 2008.
Wagner, the most successful U.S. female skater of her era as a three-time national champion and winner of a team bronze medal at the 2014 Winter Olympics, told USA Today that Coughlin, who was 22 at the time, got into her bed as she slept in a home where a party had taken place and assaulted her until she told him to stop.
Wagner, 28, is the highest-profile skater to make a public allegation of sexual assault in her sport and is the second top skater to speak publicly about Coughlin, a two-time U.S. pairs champion who died by suicide Jan. 18, the day after the U.S. Center for SafeSport gave him an interim suspension. In May, Bridget Namiotka, his pairs teammate from 2004-07, accused Coughlin of sexually abusing her for two years when she was between the ages of 14 and 17 and he was 18-21. USA Today reported in January that SafeSport had received three allegations of sexual assault by Coughlin, but his death ended the investigation and SafeSport said it would not be reopened. According to USA Today, Wagner's allegation is not one of those three cases. Coughlin's agent, Tara Modlin, told USA Today in January that the investigation was "unfounded."
Wagner credits the #MeToo movement and the Coughlin suspension as the reasons she is coming forward now after "completely blocking out" the alleged assault, during which she said, "I was absolutely paralyzed in fear." As she explained in a first-person piece written for USA Today, she did not come forward immediately partly because "I was a young skater coming up through the ranks in a judged sport. I didn't want to stir the pot. I didn't want to add anything to my career that would make me seem undesirable or dramatic. I didn't want to be known in figure skating as the athlete who would cause trouble. And I genuinely didn't feel like anyone would listen to me anyway. Everyone really liked this guy. I even liked him."
Wagner was at a house party while attending USFS camp in Colorado Springs in June 2008 and when the assault occurred. She had no ride back to the hotel so she and other girls found beds and went to sleep, she says.
"It was the middle of the night when I felt him crawl into my bed," she writes. "I had been sleeping and didn't move because I didn't understand what it meant. I thought he just wanted a place to sleep. But then he started kissing my neck. I pretended to be deep asleep, hoping he would stop. He didn't. When his hands started to wander, when he started touching me, groping my body, I tried to shift around so that he would think I was waking up and would stop. He didn't."
She alleges that he continued to grope and kiss her until she "started to get scared because he was so much bigger than I was, and I didn't know if I could push him off. I just continued to lie there pretending to be asleep, hoping that he would get bored and go somewhere else. He didn't.
"I then felt myself starting to cry, and I knew I had to make a choice. I opened my eyes and pulled away from him as he kissed my neck. I grabbed his invading hand, and I told him to stop. And he did. He looked at me for a few seconds, quietly got up and left the room. All of this happened over the period of about five minutes. That is such a small amount of time, but it's haunted me ever since."
Wagner and Coughlin "acted like nothing happened" the next morning and went on to compete on the same U.S. teams. They never talked about what happened, Wagner said, and he never offered an apology.
"I thought that maybe I had misinterpreted it all. In 2008, I didn't have the knowledge and empowerment that came with the #MeToo movement. No one had explained consent to me. Something that was so ambiguous then is very clear now."
Wagner has found her voice on a number of issues. Before the 2014 Sochi Olympics in Russia, she criticized the country's legislation banning what the government deemed to be gay propaganda and has questioned skating's judging system.
"I'm known to speak my mind," she told USA Today's Christine Brennan. "I'm a strong woman. I'm an opinionated woman. I think it's important for people to see that things like this can happen to anybody. I'm tough as nails but something this horrifying still happened to me. It's not enough for me to be a strong woman to make things like this not happen.
"If I'm going to be putting a problem out there into the universe, I want to be able to put a problem out there but also do something about it."
Barbara Reichert, a spokeswoman for USFS, told USA Today in a statement that "what happened to Ashley should not happen to anyone, period. Ashley is incredibly strong; not just to have the courage to come forward with her story, but to share her experience publicly to help others. Ashley recently spoke at U.S. Figure Skating athlete safety seminars and her experience and message of empowerment had a profound impact on skaters and their parents."