Wednesday 4th August 2021
Ex-team doctor was convicted
Abuse a cause of Biles’ problems?
Gymnastics superstar Biles thinks about the origin of her mental problems in a TV interview. The sexual abuse by the former team doctor of the US gymnasts could play a role, speculates the multiple Olympic champion.
In a TV interview, gymnastics superstar Simone Biles did not rule out the previous sexual abuse by a team doctor as the reason for her mental problems at the Olympic Games. “Now that I think about it, maybe in the back of my mind, probably because there are certain triggers,” said the 24-year-old American in an interview. “You don’t even know, but I think it could be,” Biles told Today.
Because of the mental problems, she had abandoned her competition in the all-around final with the team after only one device. Biles had also renounced the individual final in the all-around competition and three equipment final fights. The four-time Olympic champion of the 2016 Games in Rio de Janeiro competed again for the medal decision on the balance beam. There she won bronze.
Biles was one of hundreds of gymnasts and their parents who had sued former American gymnastics team doctor Larry Nassar. Since the summer of 2017, he had been sentenced to prison terms of up to 175 years in a total of three judgments for his criminal attacks against minors. He pleaded guilty to sexually abusing several girls in the trials.
Biles had already written in a long statement on Twitter in January 2018, that she was one of the women who had been sexually abused. “I’m no longer afraid to tell my story,” she wrote.
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