Lopezes named in sweeping lawsuit
Civil action accuses local Olympians of sexual misconduct
Two-time Olympic gold medalist Steven Lopez, his older brother and coach Jean Lopez, the U.S. Olympic Committee and USA Taekwondo were named as defendants Friday in a sweeping lawsuit that accuses the Lopez brothers of roaming the world as sexual predators and the USOC and USA Taekwondo of acting as the brothers’ “travel agent and commercial funder.”
The civil suit, filed in federal court in Denver by four former taekwondo athletes, including former national team members Mandy Meloon and Heidi Gilbert and former collegiate competitor Gabriella Joslin of Houston, also seeks class-action status for what attorneys describe as hundreds or thousands of women who competed in sports governed by the USOC.
It is potentially the most farreaching among the wave of lawsuits filed in the wake of the Lar-
ry Nassar gymnastics abuse case, deluging the U.S. Olympic movement with accusations of inaction, ineptitude and, in this instance, outright complicity in the abuse of female athletes.
“We are no longer saying that the USOC was merely willfully blind,” said Jon Little, an Indianapolis attorney who was among the lawyers filing the lawsuit. “We are saying that they were active participants. To the USOC, the Lopez brothers producing money and medals is more important than protecting young children from rape.”
The suit seeks unspecified monetary damages and asks that the court require the USOC and USA Taekwondo to establish and fund programs to investigate and prevent sexual abuse, exploitation and trafficking of U.S. Olympic athletes.
The Lopez brothers did not immediately return text messages seeking comment. Both brothers in 2017 denied to USA Today reporters that they had assaulted or sexually assaulted the four plaintiffs.
Image reversal sought
The lawsuit also seeks to replace the image of Steven and Jean Lopez as the “first family of taekwondo” with accusations that, supported by the USOC and USA Taekwondo, young women were treated as “commodities that can be freely shipped and transported to competitions for … sexual gratification.”
“These are crimes. They are actual crimes, and people need to be held accountable,” said Meloon, 37, of Austin, who alleges in the lawsuit she was sexually and physically abused by Jean and Steven Lopez over a period of almost a decade and suffered damage to her career as a world-class athlete when she stood up to the Lopez’s pattern of abuse.
“I’m not looking at the outcome of the lawsuit, but it is important for us to file to show that something needs to change and people need to be held accountable.”
Jean Lopez, 44, the oldest of the four Lopez siblings who have competed for the U.S. in taekwondo, last month received a lifetime ban from Olympic sports in the United States from the U.S. Center for SafeSport, which cited a repeated pattern of sexual abuse. He is appealing.
SafeSport also has a pending investigation into sexual abuse allegations against Steven Lopez, 39, a three-time Olympic medalist, five-time world champion and arguably the greatest athlete in the modern history of his sport, who continues to compete with an eye on competing at a sixth Olympics in 2020.
“They have this godly façade and this talk of family that looks great on the surface, but then you uncover the layers,” said Gilbert, a native of Washington state who trained with the Lopez family in Sugar Land in 2003-04 and won a Pan American Games gold medal in 2002. “But for people to say that this is just about Jean and Steven would be foolish. I spent my teenage years training for an Olympic sport, and when I look back now, it’s a hoax. It’s fake. It’s not real. The USOC chews you up and spits you out.”
In a 127-page filing that described several alleged instances of sexual abuse and rape committed by Jean and Steven Lopez and other taekwondo athletes, attorneys said the USOC and USA Taekwondo served as “travel agent and commercial funder for the Lopez brothers in the domestic and international sexual exploitation of young female athletes wearing Team USA on their uniforms but carrying an awful secret about the coaches they were required to listen to, call ‘Master,’ bow to and follow.”
Female athletes, attorneys wrote, were commodities to be used for sexual gratification and commercial benefit, resulting in what they described as a “feedback loop of sexual abuse, exploitation and trafficking of young athletes, all so that the officials leading the USOC and its (national governing bodies) can feed the U.S. Olympics machine.”
The suit lists for each plaintiff numerous violations of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act and the Sports Abuse Act of 2017, which was passed by Congress in the wake of the USA Gymnastics sexual abuse scandal involving disgraced team physician Larry Nassar.
Attorneys allege Steven or Jean Lopez or both forced sexual services by threatening the female athletes, the USOC benefited from their forced labor and exploitation and the women were recruited to travel around the world with the intent of being forced into sexual services.
Various allegations
Included in the lawsuit, but not listed as a defendant, is the story of Kay Poe, a 2000 Olympian from Houston who says she had a sexual relationship with a taekwondo teammate beginning in 1997, when she was 15, and a sexual relationship with Jean Lopez by 1999 that continued through her appearance at the 2000 Sydney Olympics.
Meloon, who along with other plaintiffs described their treatment in 2017 interviews with USA Today, said Jean Lopez engaged her in sexual conversations in 1994, when Meloon was 13, and in 1997 entered a hotel room in which Meloon and Poe were sleeping during a tournament in Egypt and penetrated her vagina with his fingers.
Meloon, a former world championship medalist, also said she engaged in a consensual sexual relationship with Steven Lopez after moving to Sugar Land to train with the Lopez family and that the relationship became abusive.
When she began to date other men, she said Jean Lopez orchestrated her dismissal from the national team and that David Askinas, the former CEO of USA Taekwondo, worked to destroy her reputation and to ensure she would be unable to compete for a spot on the 2008 Olympic team.
She also said she was raped at age 15 at the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, Colo., by an adult national team member, Daniel Kim, and during the winter of 1997-98 at age 17 had an abortion after becoming pregnant by Kim, who received a life ban from USA Taekwondo.
Gilbert, who lives in California, alleges she was drugged and sexually assaulted by Jean Lopez while competing in Germany in 2003. She said Steven Lopez once picked her up at the airport but refused to drive her to his home until she performed oral sex on him.
Gilbert also said in the lawsuit she was threatened by USA Taekwondo officials and ordered not to report the assault by Jean Lopez. After filing a lawsuit against Jean Lopez last month, she said an anonymous third party filed what she described as a false, retaliatory complaint against her with SafeSport.
Joslin, a native of Houston who had known the Lopez family since childhood, said she was sexually assaulted by Steven Lopez during a 2006 tournament in Bonn, Germany. She said she continued to have sexual intercourse with Steven Lopez while training at the family’s gym after Jean Lopez made it clear to her that she was to “cater to Steven.”
Two classes of plaintiffs
Joslin also said Jean Lopez raped her at her home in Houston in 2011, resulting in an ectopic pregnancy that required an abortion. While she reported the incidents to USA Taekwondo in 2015, she said the federation delayed the investigation to allow Steven Lopez to compete and Jean Lopez to coach at the 2016 Olympics.
A fourth plaintiff, Amber Means of Spokane, Wash., said she was drugged and, according to a witness, raped by Steven Lopez in June 2008. She also said she was subjected to retaliation when she rebuffed Jean Lopez’s sexual advances.
In addition to the individual complaints of the four plaintiffs, their attorneys are asking the federal court to set up two classes of plaintiffs — one class for all women who competed for USOC-governed sports and a second for women taekwondo athletes since 1997.