In a video released by USA Today Sports on Thursday morning, U.S. Olympic figure skater Ashley Wagner, 28, detailed an allegation of sexual assault against pairs skater John Coughlin, who committed suicide earlier this year. Wagner claimed she was groped and kissed without her consent in June 2008, when she was 17 years old and Coughlin was 22.
Coughlin hanged himself in January, about a month after the U.S. Center for SafeSport suspended him to investigate allegations of abuse. Bridget Namiotka, a former skating partner of Coughlin, claimed she was groomed and sexually abused by Coughlin for two years, according to the New York Post.
Wagner said that she attended a party with friends at a skating camp in Colorado when the alleged abuse took place. She was unable to get a ride back to her hotel, so she stayed the night in a bed offered to her without hesitation because she “felt safe.” Then, according to Wagner, Coughlin crawled into her bed and assaulted her for five minutes before she told him to stop.
“It was the middle of the night when I felt him crawl into my bed,” she recalled. “I had been sleeping and I 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.” – READ MORE