Ex-Olympic Skater Ashley Wagner Says She Was Sexually Assaulted at 17

Ashley Wagner, a former U.S. Olympic skater, says she was sexually assaulted by a fellow figure skater, John Coughlin when she was 17 years old. She revealed this in a first-person story by USA Today, admitting the incident occurred in 2008.

“It was the middle of the night when I felt him crawl into my bed,” Wagner said. “I had been sleeping and didn’t move because I didn’t understand what it meant. I thought he just wanted a place to sleep. But then he started kissing my neck. I pretended to be deep asleep, hoping he would stop. He didn’t. When his hands started to wander, when he started touching me, groping my body, I tried to shift around so that he would think I was waking up and would stop. He didn’t.”

She went on to say Coughlin acted like nothing happened the next morning which led to her acting like nothing happened as well. She knew that she was assaulted, but she said this was before the #MeToo Movement and she really didn’t know what consent was.

Wagner told a couple of people about the incident at the time, but she did not go to police and press charges.

“I just wanted it to go away. I come from a military family and was trained to put my head down and keep going in the face of adversity. I also was afraid that if I told my parents, they would get mad at me for being at a party, so I kept quiet.

“There also was this: I was a young skater coming up through the ranks in a judged sport. I didn’t want to stir the pot. I didn’t want to add anything to my career that would make me seem undesirable or dramatic. I didn’t want to be known in figure skating as the athlete who would cause trouble. And I genuinely didn’t feel like anyone would listen to me anyway. Everyone really liked this guy. I even liked him.”

Coughlin died by suicide earlier this year in Kansas City. This was on the heels of him being suspended by U.S. Center for SafeSport. There was going to be an investigation on Coughlin for previous claims of sexual misconduct, but SafeSport decided against it because of his death.

Wagner, 28, is a three-time U.S. figure skating national champion and she won a bronze medal in the 2014 Winter Olympics.