Ex-USA Gymnastics CEO pleads the Fifth
Christine Brennan: Penny shamefully quiet on ongoing sex abuse scandal
WASHINGTON – After nearly two years of public horror, doubt and questions in the ongoing sex abuse scandals enveloping USA Gymnastics and other U.S. Olympic sports, Tuesday seemed to be as good a time as any to finally expect some answers.
Then former USA Gymnastics CEO Steve Penny, the man in charge during what we now know as the darkest days in U.S. Olympic history, invoked his Fifth Amendment right to avoid questions from two U.S. senators six times within five minutes before being excused and slowly and silently walking down a middle aisle out of a subcommittee hearing to head for the exit.
All of a sudden, a single word filled the air: “Shame!”
It was the voice of Amy Moran Compton, a former gymnast in the audience who herself was a victim of sex abuse from her coach Doug Boger in the 1970s and 1980s in Southern California.
Compton’s strong, sure voice, uttering that one simple word, stopped subcommittee chairman Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., in his tracks, mid-sentence. He fell silent for several seconds.
Despite the disruption, he did not reprimand Compton, as might have been custom on any other day.
But not on this day. Reprimand? No way. He, and the 200 others assembled in the audience, some of them victims of former USA Gymnastics and Michigan State doctor Larry Nassar, might as well have broken into applause.
Finally, in the third congressional hearing in as many months on the sex abuse scandals in gymnastics, swimming, figure skating, taekwondo and other sports, there was a moment of raw emotion, a moment of human clarity, a moment in which time stood still. Shame, indeed.
Walking with a pronounced limp, Penny didn’t flinch as Compton shouted that single word after he moved past her in the crowd. Soon, he was out the door and gone, and with him, any sliver of knowledge that might have come had he told the hearing, and the many assembled victims, exactly what he knew when, and why he didn’t act sooner to help the hundreds of girls and women assaulted by Nassar.
“I looked him in the eyes,” Compton said of Penny after the hearing was over. She said she was in frequent contact with Penny about sex abuse in gymnastics 10 years ago, including posting warnings about it on Facebook.
“I really did want to bear witness to whether he was going to be truthful or not,” she said of flying in from Portland, Ore., to attend the hearing. “Almost 10 years ago, Steve Penny looked me in the eye and said he would do the right thing, and he did not. We’ve been working with and against Steve Penny for 10 years, well before Larry Nassar.”
Then she watched him walk out, leaving all those questions unanswered. “That was so cowardly,” Compton said. “That’s what he shows about the protection of children. ... The system is broken and has been broken for many, many years. It’s just shameful.”
This was Penny’s first public appearance since he resigned under pressure from the USOC in March 2017. In some ways, his presence was unremarkable, a disgraced leader unwilling to talk about the ugly and awful past. In other ways, though, it was utterly unforgettable, because someone had the courage to stand up and say one truthful word.