USA Gymnastics, Riegel said, “still act like I don’t exist.” SafeSport is investigating Riegel’s allegations, according to emails obtained by SCNG. champion, has not heard from USA Gymnastics since filing a complaint with the organization on Oct. Moyer “could still go and coach anywhere,” said Jessica O’Beirne, founder of the influential podcast GymCastic, who has chronicled sexual abuse in the sport for more than a decade. Center for SafeSport’s banned lists, something Riegel wants to change. Jacki confirmed the move, but the expulsion was not an official act and was never formally announced or made public, and Moyer is not listed on USA Gymnastics or the U.S. Moyer was forced out of the sport in 1993 by Mike Jacki, president of what was then called the U.S. All the ruined lives in the world will not give me mine back.” “I have never sought restitution, heads to roll or explanations,” Riegel wrote USA Gymnastics and U.S. Riegel is going public now out of frustration over the way USA Gymnastics handled his case both when he was a teenager and since he filed a complaint with the sport’s national governing body last fall. In recent months Riegel began alluding to his abuse in poems, posting them on his Facebook page like coded messages snuck through the cracks of his prison wall. Nearly 40 years after his account of stacking furniture and luggage between himself and Moyer, Riegel still lives his life behind the walls he has erected, a sort of self-imposed solitary confinement a man alone with his ghosts. “He always has this guard up,” his mother Mary Riegel said. The fortress became a prison of his own design. Old friends, teammates, family members, wives, none of them were allowed to get close to him. The problem is that Moyer wasn’t the only one kept out by the barriers Riegel built. ‘Get the (expletive) off me.’ And I did that every night during that trip and he never got to me again. “Water spilled on me in the middle of night. “My thought was there’s no way he can be successful with me in the middle of the night while I’m sleeping,” Riegel recalled. A row of drinking glasses filled with water placed atop the wall served as a warning system. To prevent Moyer abusing him in the middle of the night, Riegel started sleeping between the hotel or dorm room wall and a protective barrier of overturned glass coffee tables, couches, recliners, dressers, and suitcases. ‘I’m standing right here what are you doing?’ And he’d say ‘oh, you know you want it, come on.’ And the next day I’m out on the podium competing with ‘USA’ on my chest.”Īt 15½, Riegel began building walls to keep Moyer away from him.Įven on Team USA trips, Moyer made sure he roomed with Riegel, the former gymnast said. “And I’m 14 years old in a hotel room and I’m right there. “He’d lay there and masturbate in front of me,” Riegel continued. national team at international competitions in foreign countries. championships, and while competing for the U.S. Air Force academies, the night before Riegel, at 12, was launched onto the global stage at Madison Square Garden, at U.S. Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, the U.S. The abuse took place at Moyer’s apartment, Riegel alleges, at local hotels and racquet clubs, at the U.S. Neither location nor occasion deterred Moyer’s abuse, said Riegel, speaking publicly on the record for the first time about his alleged abuse. “I was sexually abused by my personal coach from 1973 to 1981, and due to the absolute failures of the USGF (USAG) and USOC, it wiped away my youth, cut short my career, and left me with wounds that never heal,” Riegel wrote in a letter to USA Gymnastics and SafeSport last October. national team coach, to law enforcement during Riegel’s career. Olympic Committee staff were aware of Moyer’s sexual abuse, Riegel alleges, but took no steps to stop it or report Moyer, a U.S. Center for Safe Sport and USA Gymnastics documents obtained by SCNG.Ĭoaches and officials with USA Gymnastics, then known as the U.S.
COACH GAY SEX STORY SERIES
Moyer began exposing himself and masturbating in front of Riegel when the gymnast was just 8 years old and then masturbated and performed oral sex on him between the ages of 11 and 16, Riegel alleges in a series of exclusive interviews with the Southern California News Group and according to U.S. He was also being routinely sexually abused, Riegel alleges, by the very man who was trying to make him an Olympic champion - Larry Moyer, his coach.