Gymnast speaks here on abuse
Gold medal winner Aly Raisman says her proudest moment is “speaking in court.”
She’s won six Olympic medals — three golds, two silvers and one bronze. But when she was asked what her proudest accomplishment was, Aly Raisman said, “Speaking in court.”
Raisman, 23, was one of more than 140 women to accuse former Michigan State University and USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar of sexual assault. She and 155 others read powerful victim impact statements at a dramatic trial that ended with Nassar receiving an effective sentence of life in prison.
Raisman, who was part of the goldmedal-winning teams in the 2012 London Olympics and 2016 Rio Olympics, participated in a question-and-answer session for the Waukesha Women’s Center annual luncheon in front of a crowd of nearly 850 people at the Potawatomi Hotel and Casino in Milwaukee.
“People come up to me and tell me they report sexual assault to their schools,” Raisman said. “And they are ignored.”
Raisman has been outspoken in her thoughts about USA Gymnastics.
“USA Gymnastics was like a family, and I felt my family let me down. When they heard about abuse, they tried to cover it up,” she said. “They still have the same policies in place to protect athletes from abuse that Larry Nassar created.”
Raisman is now working with the nonprofit Darkness to Light to train people on how to identify sexual predators. Her goal is that every adult take the two-hour training.
“If the adults around me had been educated to notice predators, many people would not have been abused,” she said.
Raisman and women’s center director, Angela Mancuso, talked about changing the culture surrounding survivors, starting with the event’s theme: denim.
In honor of International Denim Day,
people wore denim to the event to draw awareness to common misconceptions about victims.
Denim Day began in 1999 after a man was released from prison in Italy for rape because his lawyers argued that the victim helped the perpetrator remove her jeans because they were tight.
“Just because a woman is wearing a sexy outfit doesn’t mean she wants to have sex with you,” Raisman said. “We live in a culture where it’s OK to ask ‘What were you wearing’ (to a survivor of assault).”
The crowd rose to applaud Raisman when she finished speaking, and people came up to greet her.
Attendee Cindy Ereto said, “I look and see her up there and think, ‘That could be my daughter.’”
Ereto’s daughter Gina said, “She’s my age. It’s awesome to see someone my age standing up and speaking out.”
Mancuso said that despite the momentum surrounding the #MeToo movement, the fight against abuse is far from over.
“Our days and nights (at the center) have been the same,” she said.
“We work around the clock. The needle has moved, but let’s not get complacent.”
“In 2017, our center responded to 21 rapes in Waukesha County,” she said. “So far in 2018, we’ve responded to nine. We are on pace to surpass what happened in 2017.”