GREENSBORO, N.C. — Last March, the U.S. Center for SafeSport delivered a chilling assessment of sexual abuse in the sport of figure skating, saying it discovered “a culture in figure skating that allowed grooming and abuse to go unchecked for too long.”
Despite a series of high-profile allegations of sexual abuse in the intervening months, U.S. Figure Skating executive director David Raith told USA TODAY Sports Thursday afternoon, “We don’t agree with their statement.”
But several well-known members of the U.S. skating community said that SafeSport’s appraisal is correct, including three-time national champion Ashley Wagner, who accused the late John Coughlin of sexually assaulting her in June 2008 when she was 17 and he was 22 in a USA TODAY Sports story in August.