00:00To be clear, I blame Larry Nassar, and I also blame an entire system that enabled and perpetrated his abuse.
00:20I don't want another young gymnast, Olympic athlete, or any individual to experience the horror that I and hundreds of others have endured
00:29before, during, and continuing to this day in the wake of the Larry Nassar abuse.
00:40USA Gymnastics and the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee knew that I was abused by their official team doctor long before I was ever made aware of their knowledge.
00:52In May of 2015, Rhonda Fayan, the former head of USA Gymnastics Women's Program, was told by my friend and teammate, Maggie Nichols, that she suspected I, too, was a victim.
01:05Yet while I was a member of the 2016 U.S. Olympic team, neither USAG, USOPC, nor the FBI ever contacted me or my parents.
01:15While others had been informed and investigations were ongoing, I had been left to wonder why I was not told until after the Rio Games.
01:24This is the largest case of sexual abuse in the history of American sport, and although there has been a fully independent investigation of the FBI's handling of the case,
01:37neither USAG nor USOPC have ever been made the subject of the same level of scrutiny.
01:44These are the entities entrusted with the protection of our sport and our athletes, and yet it feels like questions of responsibility and organizational failures remain unanswered.
01:54As the lone competitor in the recent Tokyo Games who was a survivor of this horror, I can assure you that the impacts of this man's abuse are not ever over or forgotten.
02:04The announcement in the spring of 2020 that the Tokyo Games were to be postponed for a year meant that I would be going to the gym, to training, to therapy, living daily among the reminders of this story for another 365 days.
02:21As I have stated in the past, one thing that helped me push each and every day was the goal of not allowing this crisis to be ignored.
02:29I worked incredibly hard to make sure that my presence could maintain a connection between the failures and the competition at Tokyo 2020.
02:38That has proven to be an exceptionally difficult burden for me to carry, particularly when required to travel to Tokyo without the support of any of my family.
02:49I am a strong individual and I will persevere, but I never should have been left alone to suffer the abuse of Larry Nassar.
02:57And the only reason I did was because of the failures that lie at the heart of the abuse that you are now asked to investigate.
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