Longtime U.S. Olympic snowboarding coach Peter Foley, accused of sexual misconduct by a former athlete through the Winter Video games in February and relieved of his duties over the weekend, faces a broader, formal investigation into new allegations of sexual assault.
Lindsey Sine Nikola, who labored for U.S. Ski and Snowboard from 2006 to 2010, instructed The New York Instances that she had been sexually assaulted by Foley and contacted the U.S. Middle for SafeSport final week.
Nikola is considered one of no less than 4 ladies who’ve accused Foley, in response to allegations first reported by ESPN. Three are former athletes, together with an unnamed Olympic medalist who reported that she was sexually assaulted by Foley at a coaching camp when she was 19, ESPN stated.
A lawyer for Foley instructed ESPN that the accusations have been false, and that Foley would cooperate with the investigation.
Foley, a head coach for U.S. Ski and Snowboard since 1994, was suspended from his job final week pending an investigation by SafeSport, an impartial physique that handles accusations of abuse and misconduct in Olympic sports activities. On Sunday, U.S. Ski and Snowboard introduced that he was not employed by the group.
The unnamed former athlete, ESPN reported, stated that she was asleep in a resort room shared by a number of nationwide group members when Foley slid in behind her, “reached his left arm over my physique and put his fingers inside me.”
As a head coach, Foley decided which athletes made the groups.
“There may be now this energy place,” the athlete instructed ESPN. “He can say I can’t begin on this World Cup and I can’t be within the Video games.”
Allegations in opposition to Foley have been first raised publicly in February through the Winter Olympics in Beijing. Callan Chythlook-Sifsof, who competed with the nationwide group in snowboard cross on the 2010 Vancouver Video games, stated in a sequence of Instagram posts on Friday that Foley took “bare pictures of feminine athletes for over a decade.”
She described a broad tradition of sexual misconduct, together with an episode during which she stated Foley had directed sexual remarks at her and one other snowboarder.
Foley denied these allegations to The New York Instances on the identical day that Lindsey Jacobellis and Nick Baumgartner, coached by Foley, received a gold medal within the blended group occasion of snowboard cross, a subset of snowboarding that was Foley’s major focus.
However the public accusations by Chythlook-Sifsof received the eye of different ladies, together with Nikola, who labored in communications for U.S. Ski and Snowboard.
“Considering again on it made me understand the intent [of the photo shoot] was, ‘Now we have a secret,’” Nikola instructed ESPN. “As soon as pictures like this exist, they turn out to be their very own supply of energy. They have been completely a software for retaining me quiet. I felt like I couldn’t say something as a result of there have been these pictures of me to discredit me.”
Nikola reported that she was subsequently sexually assaulted by Foley.
