When it came my turn to address the crowd at the 5th IOC Women in Sport World Conference over the last few days here in Los Angeles, I spoke aloud, boldly, of the repeated sexual molestation I endured at the hands of my coach when I was a teenager.
At one point, I took a long pause and raised my voice to say “I’m sick of it, young athletes victims of heinous sexual crimes by the very coaches whose job it is to protect and mentor!! And you know who else is sick of it? Katherine Starr, where are you?”
Katherine Starr
At that point, tall, broad-shouldered, 44-year-old, former world-class swimmer Katherine Starr stood. I told the audience that this athlete, too, had been raped and continually molested through her young years, by her coach. Katherine’s trauma was so disturbing that she legally changed her name. Her birth name, Annabelle Cripps, became so abhorrent to her, ringing forever in her ears with the memory of the coach’s voice slobbering it over her pinned-down body.
Katherine has now launched a new org to set new standards of protection for young athletes.
Check out Safe4Athletes.org.
Katherine is doing important work. You may not realize how broad and deep the epidemic of athlete molestation exists, but believe it. The numbers are staggering.
And speaking for at least two of us,
Katherine Starr and I ARE SICK OF IT!!!!!
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This is a wonderful mission. My heart breaks when I think of what Diana had to endure at the hands of her coach. We went to high school together and the thought that all of that was happening while we were all oblivious and innocent kids. All of the time everyone thinking Jack N. was a saint. You are a hero in so many ways old friend. Inspire on! I am wearing your xtreme dream cap today!
Mad props to both of you. Until the word rape loses its sting of shame can all of us stand up against abusers – much like breast cancer used to be whispered and women were afraid to go to the doctor’s office when they Knew there was a lump.
The Women’s Sports Foundation is proud to be a founding partner with safe4athletes.org!
Nancy, senior director of advocacy, WSF
I shudder every time I hear another horrible story like these kind of things happening to any woman young or older.
Good for you for being willing to expose your own trauma in order to give others an opportunity to deal with or perhaps even avoid theirs.
I hope someday that people with good sense will get into power and that people in power will get good sense! Predators belong behind bars, never to be returned to society. Better still would be to send these offenders to death row and drop the pellet, get the rope out or whatever the State has in place and make this Nation safer for children. Until that happens Diana, you and other survivors will have to be the voice of reason. There isn’t a stronger, better woman for the job! I’m just sorry you have to always talk about it, must be painful for you to have to re-live that terrible period in your life. Thank-you for everything you have done to keep it in the light, instead of in darkness, where the child predator would rather it remain.