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, advised The New York Instances that she had been sexually assaulted by Foley and contacted the U.S. Heart for SafeSport final week.
Nikola is one in all no less than 4 girls 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 advised ESPN that the accusations had 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 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 crew 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 in opposition to Foley had been first raised publicly in February through the Winter Olympics in Beijing. Callan Chythlook-Sifsof, who competed with the nationwide crew in snowboard cross on the 2010 Vancouver Video games, stated in a collection 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 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, gained a gold medal within the blended crew occasion of snowboard cross, a subset of snowboarding that was Foley’s major focus.
However the public accusations by Chythlook-Sifsof bought the eye of different girls, 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, ‘Now we have a secret,’” Nikola advised ESPN. “As soon as pictures like this exist, they turn into their very own supply of energy. They had been completely a software for maintaining 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.