Editors’ note: This story contains accounts of sexual assault. If you or someone you know is a survivor of sexual assault, contact the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-4673 or at https://www.rainn.org
Three former athletes and a former employee have described sexual assault and harassment by Peter Foley, the former coach of U.S. Ski and Snowboard, ESPN’s Alyssa Roenigk and Tisha Thompson reported Tuesday.
Per ESPN, all four women have filed reports to U.S. Center for SafeSport, a watchdog organization that polices sexual abuse cases in amateur sports around the United States. The accounts about Foley range from unwanted kissing and touching to coercing the former athletes into taking nude photographs.
One Olympic medalist, who spoke with ESPN with the condition of anonymity, filed an oral complaint to SafeSport that said Foley sexually assaulted her. After participating in a U.S. training camp, the athlete said Foley drove her and other athletes to the airport. He told them they would all be sleeping together in the same room while they waited for their flights the next day. While she shared a bed with two women athletes, three men slept in the other bed.
She said that she was on the edge of the bed, and while she was asleep, she felt someone sneak in bed with her. She realized it was the coach and said that he “reached his left arm over my body and put his fingers inside me.”
“I just laid there,” she told ESPN. “I remember just laying there in shock. It happened for a while and it just stopped and he got up and left.”
She was 19 at the time.
The athlete also experienced another instance in which she said Foley forcibly kissed her. Years later, after her and her teammates were celebrating her Olympic medal, Foley approached her.
“He whispers in my ear, ‘I still remember how you were breathing,’” the woman said. “I knew. I knew exactly what the f--- he was talking about. It gave me chills. It brought me back to being 19.”
The four women made their complaints to SafeSport last week. Foley was temporarily suspended by SafeSport on Friday. U.S. Ski and Snowboard said the same day he was no longer employed by the entity, per ESPN.
U.S. Ski and Snowboard opened an investigation into the U.S. snowboard cross team in February after former Olympic snowboarder Callan Chythlook-Sifsof said Foley took “naked photos of female athletes for over a decade.”
Lindsey Sine Nikola, a former U.S. Ski and Snowboard employee, told ESPN that Foley coerced her into taking nude photographs and then later sexually assaulted her at a World Cup ski race in December 2008. According to Nikola, he asked to stay with her at a World Cup ski race in Beaver Creek, Colo., because he wasn’t coaching and wanted to take photographs of the event.
Under the assumption she and Foley would not be sharing a bed, she said yes. During the trip, he showed her clothed pictures of an athlete that he had taken and asked whether she would want some. She agreed and, during the photo shoot in the hotel room, he pressured her to reveal more and more of her body until she was completely naked.
In a later instance on that same trip, Nikola said that Foley got in bed with her after a night out and asked for a back rub. She consented, but she said he then told her he wanted to “do something physical with [her].” She said no and moved away from Foley, and then he began touching her physically, putting his hands on her breasts and genitals.
She said he then undressed, rolled her on her back and ejaculated onto her back.
“I was stunned because I said no and there he is with his hands on me, touching me under my clothes and I’m frozen,” she said to ESPN about the encounter. “I just kind of mentally shrunk within myself and waited for it to be over.”
Foley’s attorney, Howard Jacobs, refuted the claims brought against his client.
“Any allegations of sexual misconduct being made against him are false,” Jacobs said to ESPN. “Mr. Foley has not engaged in any conduct that violates the SafeSport Code, and he will cooperate with the U.S. Center for SafeSport when and if they contact him.”
Women connected to the team told ESPN that the culture within U.S. Ski and Snowboard allowed for Foley, who has been with the team since its creation in 1994, to mistreat female athletes. Women feared of being retaliated against or of losing their spots on the team if they spoke out.
They also felt there was no one in a position of power that they could confide in. Per ESPN, there has been only one female coach in the history of the team, and she was not employed on the Olympic level.
“It was the culture,” the athlete who was assaulted after a U.S. training camp told ESPN. “It was what guys did. We had drunk guys busting into your room, getting in your bed, humping your leg, grabbing bras out of the drawer and running down the hall with them.”
