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It's Been a Minute

Interview: #MeToo Hits Elite Sports

It's Been a Minute

NPR

News Commentary, Society & Culture, News, Spirituality, Religion & Spirituality

4.68.8K Ratings

🗓️ 18 September 2018

⏱️ 27 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

It's Tuesday: Sam talks to speed skater Bridie Farrell. Her mentor, former Olympian Andy Gabel, sexually abused her when she was a teenager. Sam also talks to journalist Alexandra Starr about the unique ways elite sports can groom children to be victims of abuse.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

According to our listeners, this episode contains descriptions of sexual abuse of minors.

0:04.3

May not be good for kids to hear this one.

0:14.5

From NPR, I'm Sam Sanders. It's been a minute. Today on the show, we're talking Me Too.

0:19.6

We have discussed the Me Too movement a lot on this show. Me Too in politics, Me Too in Hollywood,

0:25.4

Me Too in journalism, in NPR's newsroom even. Now we're going to talk about Me Too and sports.

0:31.7

And the dozens of stories you've been hearing for months of young elite athletes being abused

0:36.4

by their coaches and their doctors and their mentors. People they should be able to trust.

0:41.2

An explosive new report says USA Swimming covered up hundreds of sexual abuse cases.

0:46.9

Today, the US Center for Safe Sport banned a former Olympic Taekwondo coach from the sport.

0:52.8

The organization found Jean Lopez guilty of sexual misconduct against athletes.

0:58.3

In some cases, those athletes were minors. Big shake up at USA Gymnastics this morning.

1:03.1

The CEO, Carrie Perry, is out after just nine months on that job. She was reportedly forced to resign

1:10.2

as the organization continues to struggle to recover from the Larry Nasser sex abuse scandal.

1:15.6

A Larry Nasser, of course, he was the former sports doctor for USA Gymnastics and Michigan State University.

1:21.6

He was convicted of sexually assaulting numerous young women under his care.

1:25.8

Nasser was recently sentenced to up to 175 years in prison. You can probably recall that trial,

1:32.2

more than 150 victims confronted Nasser in public, including Olympic medalist Ali Reisman.

1:38.6

The reality is you caused me a great deal of physical, mental, and emotional pain.

1:43.0

You never healed me. You took advantage of our passions and our dreams.

1:48.0

In the wake of Nasser's trial, there have been lots of other stories like that one and lots of other

1:52.4

sports. Top officials have been forced out of their jobs for not dealing with reports of sexual

1:56.9

assault and others are under new scrutiny. Today I'm going to talk with one elite athlete about

...

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