Former world champion American gymnast Marcia Frederick has filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Olympic Committee and USA Gymnastics for allegedly failing to report sexual assault.

Marcia filed the class action lawsuit in June because she alleges the U.S. Olympic Committee and USA Gymnastics ignored her and hundreds of other athletes alleged sexual abuse by gymnastics coach Richard Carlson.

In February 2018, the Safe Sport Act went into effect, making it a federal crime not to report sexual assault or abuse to law enforcement.

Marcia originally filed a complaint with USA Gymnastics in September 2015. Carlson reportedly was banned as one of their coaches as of June 1.

In 1978, Marcia won gold in the uneven parallel bars competition at the World Gymnastics Championships. She alleges she suffered years of abuse by coach Richard Carlson who was employed by an elite Connecticut gymnastics training business. She says she did report sexual assault allegations to the gym’s owner, but nothing was ever done.

According to Marcia’s complaint, only four of the 47 national governing bodies that had pending investigations decided not “to transfer them to the Center for Safe Sport, including USAG and Ms. Frederick’s case.”

The Center for Safe Sport has received 540 reports of abuse from 38 different sports. Currently, 73 are either still under investigation or have resulted in lifetime bans from the sport.

When the Safe Sport Act passed in February, the national governing bodies had 24 hours from the passage of the act or 24 hours from the moment an assault was reported to report sexual assault to the authorities.

Failure to Report Sexual Assault, Physical or Emotional Abuse

The U.S. Olympic Committee is the entity that acts as the governing body of all the U.S. Olympic teams. USA Gymnastics is the national governing body devoted to both men’s and women’s U.S. gymnastics teams.

Other named defendants are Muriel Grossfeld and George Ward, who owned Grossfeld’s American Gold Gym and employed gymnastics coach Richard Carlson, who also is a named defendant.

USA Gymnastics’ responsibilities include certifying the coaches, sanctioning the gyms who meet training standards, and sponsoring competitions. Marcia, who was 13 years old when she began training at Grossfeld’s American Gold Gym in 1975, alleges USA Gymnastics held control over the gym’s owners, too.

The U.S. Olympic Committee touted its policies to prevent sexual misconduct and child sexual abuse by even making sure it could define “grooming” behaviors that it defined as “… the most common strategy used by offenders to seduce their victims.”

Still, “the USAG and the USOC affirmatively allowed a culture of gymnast assault and abuse by its certified coaches to persist by taking overt acts to conceal the abuse and assault in the interest of protecting themselves and their criminal coaches, while simultaneously inflicting emotional and physical harm on countless young athletes who trusted that USOC and USAG would ensure their safety,” according to Marcia’s class action lawsuit.

The Report Sexual Assault Lawsuit is Marcia Frederick v. United States Olympic Committee, et al., Case No. 1:18-cv-11299, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts.