LSU gymnast Olivia Dunne appeared to describe the camp where former USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar abused the team’s athletes as an asylum in a TikTok post.
More than a hundred athletes, including gold medal winners Simone Biles and Aly Raisman, say Nassar sexually abused them at the Karolyi ranch in Huntsville, Texas.
Dunne was a member of the junior national team that trained at the Texas camp under the USA Gymnastics program.
The college gymnast, who has eight million followers on TikTok, referenced the ranch in a recent post, calling it an “asylum.”
Using a TikTok trend for Taylor Swift’s song Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?, from the singer’s latest album, Dunne shared a series of photos from Karolyi’s camp.
LSU gymnast Olivia Dunne shared a TikTok about the camp where former USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar abused the team’s athletes.
Dunne used a TikTok trend for a Taylor Swift song to share photos of the Karolyi Ranch
More than a hundred athletes claim to have been sexually abused by Nassar at the Karolyi ranch
The trend, which has been circulating on the platform in the two weeks since the album’s release, uses the lyrics: “You wouldn’t last an hour in the asylum where I was raised.”
Dunne previously addressed the USA Gymnastics training camp and the scandals that occurred at the ranch.
“I left my family for a week every year to go to training camp in the United States, which obviously had terrible scandals and that whole atmosphere was not so good,” he said in an interview on the Full Send Podcast last year.
“I was there on the United States national team. I decided when I was 16… USA Gymnastics fell apart while I was in that program and I thought, “I’ll be happy to continue my full journey to LSU.”
More than 150 gymnasts were abused by Nassar, the former national team doctor, during his 30-year career.
Nassar admitted to sexually assaulting female athletes while he worked at Michigan State University and USA Gymnastics.
The doctor also admitted possessing child pornography, and more than 100 women sought more than a billion dollars from the federal government for the FBI’s failure to stop him.
He was sentenced in federal court in 2017 to 60 years in prison for possession of child sexual abuse material. The following year, Nassar was sentenced to up to 175 years and up to 125 years, respectively, in two separate Michigan courts for sexually abusing gymnasts under his care.
Simone Biles is one of the athletes who suffered abuse from the former team doctor
Biles, a four-time Olympic gold medalist, trains at the Karolyi Ranch in 2015
In 2018, USA Gymnastics terminated its agreement with Karolyi’s coaching camp after abuse was uncovered in an investigation.
Last week, the US Department of Justice on Tuesday announced a $138.7 million settlement with more than 100 people who accused the FBI of grossly mishandling sexual assault allegations against Nassar in 2015 and 2016, a critical period of time that allowed the sports doctor to continue taking advantage of victims before his arrest.
Combined with other settlements, several organizations have set aside $1 billion to compensate hundreds of women who said Nassar assaulted them under the guise of receiving treatment for sports injuries.
Simone Biles publicly broke her silence in January 2018 and revealed in a powerful tweet that she was one of Nassar’s victims.
Pictured are Martha and Bela Karolyi, after whom the Karolyi ranch is named.
Gymnast training during a morning training session at Karolyi Ranch in 2011
In her statement, she also shared her anguish at having to continue training at Karolyi Ranch, the former USA Gymnastics national training center where she and other gymnasts were abused by the disgraced doctor.
“It took me a long time to write that, probably a couple of days, because every time I started writing, I started having problems and I couldn’t get over it,” he said.
Shortly after Simone’s tweet, USA Gymnastics closed the central Texas ranch owned by former coaches Bela and Martha Karolyi, and the gymnast realized she could use her platform to advocate for others.
During the #MeToo campaign, McKayla Maroney shared her story, claiming that Nassar began abusing her when she was 13 years old and that the assaults did not stop until she left the sport in 2017 at the age of 20.
