Longtime U.S. Olympic snowboarding coach Peter Foley, accused of sexual misconduct by a former athlete in the course of 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, advised The New York Instances that she had been sexually assaulted by Foley and contacted the U.S. Middle for SafeSport final week.
Nikola is one in every of at the very least 4 ladies who’ve accused Foley, according 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 advised 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 unbiased physique that handles accusations of abuse and misconduct in Olympic sports activities. On Sunday, U.S. Ski and Snowboard introduced that he was now not employed by the group.
The unnamed former athlete, ESPN reported, stated that she was asleep in a lodge 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 advised ESPN. “He can say I can’t begin on this World Cup and I can’t be within the Video games.”
Allegations towards Foley have been first raised publicly in February in the course of 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 photographs of feminine athletes for over a decade.”
She described a broad tradition of sexual misconduct, together with an episode wherein 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 obtained the eye of different ladies, together with Nikola, who labored in communications for U.S. Ski and Snowboard.
“Pondering again on it made me notice the intent [of the photo shoot] was, ‘We’ve got a secret,’” Nikola advised ESPN. “As soon as photographs like this exist, they grow to be their very own supply of energy. They have been completely a instrument for maintaining me quiet. I felt like I couldn’t say something as a result of there have been these photos of me to discredit me.”
Nikola reported that she was subsequently sexually assaulted by Foley.
