Open the files, abused ex-gymnast tells USA Gymnastics
INDIANAPOLIS — She still can’t utter the word “abuse,” but Kelly Cutright decided this week was time to speak out about the anguish she suffered at the hands of her gymnastics coach.
The South Carolina woman’s former coach, William McCabe, began abusing her in 1999, according to court records. That was the year after USA Gymnastics, the sport’s national governing body, was warned that McCabe might be a sexual predator.
Yet not until she read an Indianapolis Star investigation two weeks ago did Cutright find out that the organization had dismissed those allegations against McCabe as “hearsay” and filed them in a drawer in its headquarters here.
Now, as USA Gymnastics prepares to argue in court that sexual misconduct complaint files it compiled on 54 coaches should remain secret, Cutright contacted The Star and said she would like the files to be made public so other girls and boys don’t suffer her fate.
Major sponsor questions USA Gymnastics' practices
“There’s no telling how many of those coaches are still coaching,” said Cutright, who asked to be identified by her maiden name. “There’s no telling how many of those kids could still be in danger.”
The investigation uncovered four instances in which USA Gymnastics was warned about predatory coaches but did not report them to authorities. In all four cases, the coaches went on to abuse children.
Former USA Gymnastics officials testified under oath that they seldom, if ever, forwarded allegations of child abuse to police or child protective services without being asked. The investigation also revealed that USA Gymnastics maintains sexual-abuse complaint files on more than 50 coaches.
On Monday, Judge Ronald Thompson will hold a hearing on making those files public. The Indianapolis Star filed a motion to intervene in a lawsuit in the State Court of Effingham County in Springfield, Ga.
The motion asks Thompson to unseal depositions as well as the sexual misconduct files submitted as evidence in that court case. Those files cover a 10-year period — from 1996 to 2006 — and it’s unclear how many files have been created since then.
The Star argues that the records contain important information related to the safety of thousands of young gymnasts who train in more than 3,000 gyms that are members of USA Gymnastics and also contends the files were improperly sealed.
USA Gymnastics says its rights and the privacy of its members would be irrevocably violated if the files become public. It contends the records were properly sealed under Georgia law, and any claim of a public interest in the files is “a mirage, based on assumptions and unfounded allegations.”
“USA Gymnastics believes it is inappropriate to comment on anything related to the McCabe lawsuit at this time,” the organization said Friday in a statement. “It further believes that anything reported by The Indianapolis Star this weekend is an attempt to prejudice USA Gymnastics’ interests in the Georgia lawsuit.”
For Cutright, these legal arguments are personal.
‘I didn’t really resist anymore’
By the time McCabe began coaching Cutright, he already had been fired from multiple gyms.
In 1997, McCabe was hired to coach at International Gold Gymnastics in Tallahassee, where Cutright, then 12, was a gymnast. The next year, he was forced to resign.
Sexual predators left off list of banned gymnastics coaches
Two Florida gym owners sent warning letters to USA Gymnastics urging it to take action against McCabe before others were harmed.
In one letter, an owner said McCabe had bragged about having a 15-year-old girl in her underwear and said he thought he would be able to “f--- her very soon.”
In a court filing Tuesday, USA Gymnastics argued that it “never received any allegation that William McCabe engaged in any act of sexual abuse against a child prior to his arrest in 2006.”
But Cutright disagreed. She said she read every word of the warnings USA Gymnastics received about McCabe; The Indianapolis Star made the letters containing those warnings public as part of its Aug. 4 investigation.
“These were people that employed him,” she said, referring to the gym owners who wrote the letters. “If that’s not good enough testimony, I don’t know what is.”
Robert Colarossi, former USA Gymnastics president, testified in a deposition that he inherited a policy of dismissing allegations as “hearsay” unless they were signed by a victim or victim’s parent.
In an interview Wednesday, Marion County Prosecutor Terry Curry questioned the policy of the Indianapolis-based organization.
“In my mind that doesn’t meet the responsibility,” Curry said. “Not necessarily in the legal reporting requirement sense, but in an abundance of caution I would think any prudent person would follow up.”
Unaware of the warnings USA Gymnastics had received but not shared with authorities or parents, Cutright and other young gymnasts followed McCabe to a gym in Georgia.
Senators want answers from USA Gymnastics chief
Cutright described what happened next. In December 1998, two months after those first warnings to USA Gymnastics, McCabe told Cutright he loved her.
He said the 13-year-old was the reason he took the job. He insinuated that her mother knew and was OK with the idea of them being in a relationship, which was untrue.
“I resisted him because it was uncomfortable and weird,” Cutright said.
So McCabe turned to threats.
“Gymnastics was my whole world,” Cutright said. “He threatened to take all that away, that my teammates would lose everything, too. Everything would be my fault. He threatened his own life if I wouldn’t, in his words, be his girlfriend. And that was kind of, at that point I didn’t really resist anymore.”
She said their relationship “moved past words.” She was too scared to tell anyone, partly because she believed her mother already knew.
The relationship continued until 2001.
“I don’t remember the specific reason why it stopped,” she said. “It just kind of did. I don’t really know. I always just figured I got too old.”
Cutright was 16.
McCabe continued to coach. Cutright tried to pretend that it never happened and that she was OK.
When she was 19, she confessed to a friend, thinking it was all her fault.
That friend, who worried Cutright was a danger to herself, eventually told Cutright’s mother. In 2006, the FBI approached her mother, who had been involved in McCabe’s gym, about its investigation into his conduct.
Cutright told the FBI about the abuse she suffered, cooperated in his criminal case, then went back to hiding it.
McCabe was charged with molesting multiple gymnasts, secretly videotaping girls changing clothes and posting their naked pictures on the Internet. He pleaded guilty in 2006 in Savannah to federal charges of sexual exploitation of children and making false statements.
McCabe, who declined an interview, is serving a 30-year sentence in federal prison.
Balanced interests
How much USA Gymnastics knew came to light after one of McCabe’s victims sued him and USA Gymnastics in 2013.
The plaintiff argues that the organization was negligent because it failed to report the allegations it received. Those complaint files on 54 coaches also were entered into evidence as part of the lawsuit.
A blind eye to sex abuse: How USA Gymnastics failed to report cases
Cutright, who is not involved in the suit, said the files should be opened because the information contained in them could save others. She believes her parents never would have allowed her to continue being coached by McCabe if they had known about the allegations against him.
Among its arguments for keeping the files sealed, USA Gymnastics said it is concerned for the privacy of victims like Cutright. Even though their names have been redacted, the victims might be identifiable, USA Gymnastics argued.
It also argues in a response filed Tuesday that any public interest in opening the documents, “must be balanced against the crucial privacy interests at stake in the sealed documents, not only with respect to victims, but also the accused, other persons, and USA Gymnastics itself.”
USA Gymnastics reiterated its argument that it is not required to report allegations of child abuse and neglect to authorities because that mandate is imposed on individuals, not organizations.
The Indianapolis-area prosecutor disagreed.
“I don’t accept that at all because there are individuals within any organization, whether a school, who received the information,” Curry said. “So that person then would have that responsibility to report under the statute, whether it’s the principal at Park Tudor or HR (human resources) person at IPS (Indianapolis Public Schools). You individually, you can’t shelter yourself under the umbrella of an organization.”
In its legal brief, USA Gymnastics criticized the newspaper for questioning its policies at a time when the organization was bringing home gold from the Rio Olympics.
“The American people, as well as these athletes, and all USA Gymnastics athletes, parents, and coaches, deserve better than to have the gymnastics national governing body tried by and in the press based on incomplete, mischaracterized, and omitted facts and conclusions.”
Both Curry and Cutright said the obligation to protect children exceeds the letter of the law.
Why coaches’ hugs make Becca Seaborn cringe
“You’re accepting responsibility for those children,” Curry said. “If you’re a school, if you’re this sort of organization, parents are entrusting their children with you and you have the responsibility.”
Cutright objects to USA Gymnastics judging which allegations should be forwarded.
“USAG as an organization, it’s not their job to decide who’s broken the law or not,” she said. “It’s their job to say, ‘We’ve gotten this allegation’ and to give it to the authorities who can decide if a law’s been broken or not.
“USAG is not accusing anybody by handing over allegations to authorities," she said. "They’re simply saying, ‘This is beyond the scope of our organization.’”
Cutright put it this way:
“When they were given the choice between protecting a coach and their reputation or protecting a child and their life, they chose to protect a coach. The kids didn’t matter. There’s risk with every decision we make. And they decided risking a child’s life was OK. And it’s not.”
‘I was worth protecting’
Cutright recently sat on her living room floor and stared at an old photo — the only one she has of her time as a young gymnast. She said she wants to show it to the USA Gymnastics executives who dismissed the allegations against McCabe as “hearsay.”
She said their inaction made her feel as if she didn’t matter.
“I want them to see who they said wasn’t worth protecting,” she said. “I want them to see the kid that they said wasn’t worth it. Because, looking back, I look at that picture and I say that I was worth it. I was worth protecting. And so was every other girl that they chose not to protect — and boy.”
For years afterward, Cutright said she felt broken. She believed she was the one who had done something wrong.
“When I told, it wasn’t like, ‘Let me tell you what happened to me,’ ” she recalled. “It was, ‘Let me tell you all these horrible things that I did when I was younger.’
“It took a lot of years to work through the fact that it wasn’t my fault, that he was the one who twisted everything and manipulated and used me for what he wanted,” she said.
Cutright said she knows it sounds weird, but she cannot say the word “abuse.”
“It’s a hard word,” she said. “It’s a hard, ugly truth to have. So it’s hard to admit to something like that.”
One day she hopes to be able to say it. She said she’s healing, slowly.
“There’s still shame in it that I feel. And so I can’t say it yet. I’m working on it. That’s why I’m getting help now, because there are things that are not healed.”
Contributing: Mark Alesia, The Indianapolis Star. Follow Marisa Kwiatkowski and Tim Evans on Twitter:@IndyMarisaK and@starwatchtim
