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The following was told to espnW by a former gymnast whose coach was found guilty of rape of a child and indecent assault and battery on a person over 14. She felt compelled to share her ordeal after recent reports that USA Gymnastics has repeatedly failed to report abuse cases?in the hopes that her story, when added to the voices of other young women, can help to enact change.?To prevent retaliation or harassment, we are not identifying her or the coach involved.It had been three years since we started having sex when the man who would later be convicted of raping me took me to an abortion clinic. He had scheduled the appointment for after my 18th birthday so that I wouldnt need a parent to sign their permission for the procedure.We went to a clinic that was an hour from where he lived and he dropped me off at the corner because he didnt want to be seen. I went in by myself, and I sat there in this room full of scared young women, all of whom had someone to support them except for me.I was taken into the back room. I remember lying down on the table and then waking up on the table. But I was in a total daze. They wheeled me out into the waiting room and I said, Im ready to go. And when they asked whether someone was there to pick me up, I said, Im sure hes waiting outside.And there he was, waiting in his car. He took me to a restaurant, and I ate two bites of food, then ran to the restroom and vomited violently. We went back to his house and he had to go coach gymnastics, so he left me there. And I remember thinking, What the f---? Why am I doing this? Why isnt somebody taking care of me right now?I had my follow-up appointment scheduled for a week later, and during recovery youre not supposed to have sex. But the night before I was supposed to go, he forced me to have sex with him because he just couldnt wait that long.I thought, What am I doing with this guy? This wasnt a real relationship.Youd think that any interactions with a child predator would be scary, but my first moments with that coach?didnt scare me one bit. I was a gymnast, and he came up from Connecticut for a meet with our gym in Massachusetts, and then all of the gymnasts and coaches went to an amusement park together.I was 13 years old, and I remember thinking he was very handsome and exuberant and had this larger-than-life personality. He was 33, and everybody wanted to be around him. He was one of those people who made you think, I would like him to notice me.On that first day, we were all standing in line for a roller coaster, singing the Billy Joel song Captain Jack. He came up to us, a bunch of 13-year-olds, and was like, You know what that song is about, right? And we said, Its about a captain! Captain Jack? And he said, No, that song is about masturbation.And I dont know if Id even heard someone say that word out loud before -- and obviously never a gymnastics coach. Looking back, it was this icebreaker. He threw this word out there, and all of a sudden we went from being coaches and athletes to having an adult conversation. And every teenager wants that, right?At the end of the day he gave me a jacket from his gym, and I was the only person he gave one to, so I thought, This is somebody who is so interesting and everyone wants to be around him, and yet hes paying attention to me.I can trace everything back to that day. I wasnt the best gymnast in the gym, so his attention was a way for me to stand out. This amazing coach has noticed me. From that day onward, I was excited to see him, and wed see each other fairly often at gymnastics meets and at a summer camp.For two or three weeks in July, he and two other coaches would run a gymnastics camp. It was usually held on a college campus, and wed train during the day, stay in dorm rooms at night and do some normal summer camp things when we werent in the gym, such as campfires and talent shows.But it was far from a wholesome camp experience, at least for me. Once you became a junior counselor around age 14, you were a part of the staff, and although you still trained during the day, you were allowed to hang out with the coaches at night, drinking and playing games that included things like strip poker and group showers. And that sexual environment often carried over to the daytime workouts.Once, I finished a tumbling pass at camp and was walking past the coach when he turned to another coach and said, in front of me, Its taking all of my willpower not to go after that one. I was 14 years old, walking past him in a leotard.It didnt matter to me that this older coach shouldnt be making those comments. From my perspective, it was just nice to be noticed. This gymnastics camp was billed by our coaches as something special -- youre part of it, and its a family. Whatever happens here stays here. And if people didnt subscribe to this and stopped coming to the camp, they would be shunned. God, you didnt want to be outside the circle.As gymnasts, we were conditioned to show how tough we could be, how little emotion we could show. We were trained to say that nothing bothered us and not show any sign of fear or pain.It all clouded my ability to see that what was happening with this coach was wrong.The first time he kissed me was in a moving truck. I was 14. He was driving. It was at the end of camp, and we were bringing mats back to one of the gyms. I remember he asked me to come sit on his lap -- while the truck was speeding down the highway. My heart was racing, knowing that something was going to happen. I was completely inexperienced with boys at that point, and then all of a sudden my coach was French-kissing me.Not long after, we were alone, and he had me put my hand down his pants and touch his penis. I knew this was not normal, and afterward I felt sick to my stomach. I couldnt sleep. I couldnt talk to anybody the next day. Now when I look back, I can see clearly that it was a violation -- that I had trusted this person, and he went way too far. At the time, I thought I was ready for something like this. But when this very adult thing happened, I wasnt ready at all.We talked later about it on the phone, and he said, Maybe you cant handle this. Maybe you arent as mature as I thought you were. He was challenging me. I was supposed to rise to it, not shy away from it. So I said, No, no, I can handle this. I do want to be with you. And I actually thought we were in a consensual relationship.He would say, You cant tell anyone. I could go to jail. What we have is special; no one will understand. That never triggered in my mind that something was wrong. I wanted to think that we did have something special, and I never told anyone.He continued to pursue me. We had intercourse when I was 15. It wasnt pleasant -- it was painful. But I remember walking away and feeling proud of myself, like I got through it. It was like in gymnastics, when you do that move that youre so scared to do.The thing I was most scared of was getting caught, because I thought I was going to get in trouble. I thought I was the one doing something wrong.The turning point for me wasnt that abortion at age 18. It was about two years after that, when I was hanging out with a couple of the gymnasts he coached, and I heard about a woman he was dating. I thought that he was cheating on me, so I went back to his house, where Id been staying, and started searching for evidence.I found a letter one of his former athletes wrote to him, talking about how he manipulated her into having sex with him when she was 15. She said she remembered the first time he entered her and how she cried, and how he would bribe her with gifts and money not to tell anyone, that she would sneak out of her house to meet with him.I didnt understand. It felt like I was reading about myself. I started to realize that I wasnt special -- he had done the same thing in the past. He was a predator. I couldnt believe there was another me out there.I confronted him about it, but he somehow twisted it around so that I was in the wrong for snooping in his house. He raged at me, and I was scared of his anger. I came away feeling guilty -- that I had done something wrong. And I wanted to believe that I was wrong about what Id found. So I didnt walk away, but I was very suspicious from that point forward, and finding that letter was the best thing that could have happened to me. It shifted my path forever.A few months later, he called me and told me that three women -- in addition to the woman who had written that letter -- had accused him of sexual abuse and that there would be an article coming out in the newspaper. He said he felt horrible that hed ruined so many peoples lives. It was the one moment when he displayed any sense of wrongdoing. Later, he would fight tooth and nail against the allegations. He said the girls were all older than 16, the age of consent, and that yes, he had relationships with them, but considered it dating because hed been only 25 at the time.I often wonder why I stuck by him as I watched the investigation go on. But I never felt a draw to stand beside these other women. There was a part of me that still wanted to hang on to this idea that his relationship with me was different.The accusations from those four women didnt lead to any criminal charges because they couldnt prove the girls had been under 16. But he was banned from USA Gymnastics in 1998. He could no longer be a member. He made a big deal out of it at the time, but I remember thinking that it didnt seem to have any impact on his life. Maybe parents didnt fully understand what had happened because he tried to garner a lot of sympathy, claiming it was all untrue and unfair. Only a few parents took their gymnasts out of his gym, and he competed with his team under different organizations instead of USA Gymnastics. He still was a director at the camp, and it seemed as if other coaches stood by him.When I look back at this, it makes me feel very frustrated by USA Gymnastics. I often think that I could have been saved if its policies were different. It all comes from the leadership down, and unless the leadership stands up and says, We are not going to tolerate this, nothing will change*. It needs to say, Anyone who crosses a toe over the line were drawing here is going to be out. You will be banned. Well talk to our sister organizations, and you wont be able to find a loophole and have access to kids. You cant run a gymnastics camp.I moved across the country shortly after he was banned to pursue a graduate degree and because I knew I needed to get away from him.After moving, I was talking to a fellow grad student who asked, So what was your longest relationship? I told him seven years, and he couldnt believe it. I told him it started when I was 14, and it was with someone 20 years older than me. It was the first time Id said any of this out loud.And this guy just looked at me and says, You know thats illegal, right? I felt like I had broken through into another universe, where there were clear lines and boundaries. I didnt have any of that in gymnastics. And I thought, Holy s---, what happened to me was wrong.I didnt want to bring him down, though. I just didnt want to be a part of it anymore. So I tried to reclaim my life far away from New England. But my part in it wasnt over.A close friend was training to be a therapist, and one day, in 2006, she talked to her own therapist about the way our gymnastics coaches had treated us. She also told her what had happened to me. And her therapist said, Thank you for sharing that with me. Im required by law to report this. It was just like that.The therapist told my friend that we could report it ourselves if we wanted to, or she would do it. I felt like my entire perspective shifted again. Even though I knew that it had been illegal, I still thought of the relationship as mostly consensual. Id never thought that what happened to me was a crime that needed to be reported right away, and for the first time I realized this could be happening to other girls, right then. I knew I had to report it.The process of going to trial would deter anybody from reporting sexual abuse. The district attorney warned me that it would feel like I was the one on trial. I didnt know what that meant when he said it, but I lived it. Everything that you do is under scrutiny. Your character is questioned. People blog about you and call you a liar and say this is unrequited love or youre just doing this to get attention.Throughout the three weeks of trial in 2010, the defense attorney would say things like, Are you sure you didnt lie in your journal? Or, Werent you a very mature 14-year-old? It was degrading and infuriating, and then we finally got to the end, and the prosecution team told me I needed to be prepared that the jury might come back with a not-guilty verdict.My heart was pounding when they read the verdicts, and I just froze when they said guilty on every count: rape of a child (three counts) and indecent assault and battery on a person over 14 (two counts). In the elevator as I left the courthouse, I collapsed and cried hysterically. I am so grateful for that jury.During the trial, many people had come forward with stories of abuse from the same man. I met the woman who had sent the letter that I had found in his house -- the letter that had changed my life. I remember this amazing sense of community, that all of these women whom Id never met before could tell the same story about their childhood as I could. There was so much positive energy in such a negative situation. We had been an army of women, and the pain wed suffered as kids was validated by that verdict.Ive had people tell me how strong I was to go to court and take this guy down. I know its meant as a compliment, and I try to hold on to that. But if I could go back and have none of this happen to me, I would do that in a second.When I look back on my childhood, I wonder who I would be without this experience. I still have nightmares that coaches are coming after me, looking for revenge. Im scared of when he gets out of jail. Its something that will always be with me, and I know I can never get those years of my life back.Some of the best people in my life have constantly reminded me that we are not our experiences -- that, as the quote says, we can take the lesson but leave the situation. And I do take this: We brought a group of women together who were so scared and alone, ashamed and hurt, and we created a community of survivors. And we made sure that this man could never hurt another girl.*In a statement to espnW, USA Gymnastics said?it received a complaint about the coach in 1997 from adults who had previously been athletes in USAG. The organization hired a retired FBI agent, who investigated the complaint and spoke with local authorities. The investigation resulted in the termination of the coachs professional membership, public notice of that termination and a lifetime ban on his participation in sanctioned competitions and other events. None of the existing USAG staff was with the organization at the time the original complaint was filed.It is heartbreaking and unacceptable for a young person to have the intolerable burden that results from being a victim of sexual misconduct, USAG chief executive officer Steve Penny said in the statement. We share the outrage that sexual assault victims and their families feel. This is why USA Gymnastics has implemented SafeSport training?and created educational materials that encourage members to contact law enforcement first when reporting incidents of abuse. Anthony Davis Pelicans Jersey . -- Adam Snyder returned to the San Francisco 49ers this season because the offensive lineman thought it was his best opportunity to win a championship. ETwaun Moore Pelicans Jersey .In my heart and mind Im competing for India, luge competitor Shiva Keshavan told The Associated Press in an email interview. Every day Im flooded with messages from Indians all over the world telling me they are supporting me. http://www.shoppelicansonline.com/ . The scientists believe the small earthquake during a Marshawn Lynch touchdown was likely greater than Lynchs famous "beast quake" touchdown run three years ago, which also came against New Orleans during a playoff game. Jrue Holiday Jersey . The phone hearing is scheduled for 4:30pm et/1:30pm pt. Winchester, who was not penalized for the hit, appeared to make contact with Kellys head early in the first period of Thursdays game in Boston. Custom New Orleans Pelicans Jerseys .J. Jefferson has been charged with assaulting his girlfriend. RIO DE JANEIRO -- The Russian whistleblowers, whose revelations ignited the scandal that has engulfed their countrys sporting establishment, say their safety concerns have deepened after an online security breach by someone they suspect may be trying to track their movements.If something happens to us, all of you should know its not an accident, 800-meter runner Yuliya Stepanova said Monday, speaking through an interpreter on a conference call with reporters from an undisclosed location in the United States.We are trying to take every measure possible to be safe, which is why we have moved. [But] if somebody really wanted to do something to us, they would probably succeed.She and her husband Vitaly Stepanov, a former employee of the now-discredited Russian Anti-Doping Agency, fled Russia with their toddler son in late 2014 after providing information and secretly recorded footage that acted as a wedge to lift the lid on widespread, systematic doping and corruption in the Russian track and field establishment.International track officials suspended the Russian federation in late 2015. Over the course of two investigations that generated considerable evidence -- including sabotage and coverups at the 2014 Sochi Winter Games on-site laboratory that were intended to up the Russian medal count -- the World Anti-Doping Agency and a group of national anti-doping agencies called for a total ban on Russian athletes in Rio.However, the International Olympic Committee, citing the rights of individual athletes, passed along the responsibility for determining eligibility to international governing bodies for each sport. The process eventually enabled the majority of Russian athletes to compete at the Summer Games. Stepanova, whose request to run as a neutral athlete was refused by the IOC, was a notable exception.Stepanova said she plans to watch the broadcast of the 800-meter event even though she is a little sad.I expected to be barred from the Olympic Games, said Stepanova, who joined her husband as an informant after she was sanctioned for biological passport abnormalities. She served a two-year ban and has detailed her doping regimen for authorities.[The IOC] never tried to understand our situation, she said. Yes, I admit I was part of that [Russian dopiing] system.dddddddddddd However, I decided I would no longer wanted to be part of that system, and I told the truth. I have apologized for my past many times. Theres nothing I can do to change it.Vitaly Stepanov called the IOCs actions frustrating because they took the side of corrupt Russian sports officials.We still have this hope it will bring changes and make competition cleaner and fairer, globally and in Russia as well, he said. A lot of talented Russian athletes have no possibility to win ... clean athletes have no possibility to succeed.If youve been in the Russian system for more than three years, you know exactly whats happening. You have three options. Lie, stay quiet, or start telling the truth.He said he was discouraged more Russian athletes have not come forward, but added that he understands why: As soon as you open your mouth, you will be fired. Athletes dont want to lose all their salaries, since they have families as well.Yuliya Stepanova said she discovered her personal email account was blocked a few days ago, but didnt think much of it at first. She then discovered that she couldnt access her information on WADAs online whereabouts system that is intended for the use of drug testers and administrators only, known by the acronym ADAMS (Anti-Doping Administration and Management System).That alarmed us, because the only reason someone would hack into the ADAMS account is to find out about our whereabouts, Stepanova said.The couple has been in the United States since last year after spending some months in Germany.WADA confirmed the breach and said Stepanova was the only athlete targeted.The couple did not reference any specific threats, but in the past, have used as context the sudden death of former RUSADA head Nikita Kamaev in February, 10 days after another former agency chief died.The Stepanovs spoke via a video conference call arranged by a Switzerland-based group that recently launched a fundraising effort and has been fielding media requests.We have no regrets we have chosen this path, Vitaly Stepanov said. His wife later added: The only thing we regret is that we didnt start reporting sooner. ' ' '