In her controversial memoir "Chalked Up," Jennifer Sey's account of the 1986 Goodwill Games includes some telling sentences about then-U.S. women's coach Don Peters and his protege, 16-year-old Doe Yamashiro, who trained with Peters at SCATS in Huntington Beach, Calif.
Don and Doe, Sey wrote, spent a lot of time together alone on the trip. Sey, who was not shy about pointing out the sexual undercurrent between some coaches and their teen gymnasts, insinuated that Peters and Yamashiro might have been more than coach/athlete.
At the very least, everybody thought so on that Goodwill Games trip to Moscow.
"It got to the point where we all joked about it. 'Where's Doe?' one girl would say, and we would all fall into a pile in fits of laughter. Yet no one intervened. Nobody asked Don, 'What's going on here?' Everyone just let it happen."
Apparently -- and unfortunately -- the rumors were true. In a report published this weekend by the Orange County Register (complete with creepy photo of Peters watching young girls wheelbarrow walking along beams with their bottoms in the air) Yamashiro told the paper that Peters fondled her inappropriately while he was training her during the 1980s, beginning when she was about 16, and that they had sex when she was 17.
USA Gymnastics is looking into the matter and sent an investigator to interview Yamashiro, though a second former SCATS gymnast who has come forward to say that she also had sex with Peters but has refused to reveal her name. Linda McNamara, a former assistant director at Peters's gym, said Peters confessed to her more than 10 years ago that he had slept with Yamashiro, the second unnamed gymnast and a third gymnast whose name also has not been revealed.
At the time, McNamara didn't tell anyone other than her police officer husband, who warned her that she could be sued by Peters for slander if she went public with the information.
Don Peters was the U.S. alpha coach somewhere between Muriel Grossfeld (whom Peters worked for during the 1970s, helping coach 1978 World bars champion Marcia Frederick) and Bela Karolyi. In his 1994 biography "Feel No Fear," Karolyi paints his and Peters's relationship as a battle of two egos. (You can see Peters here at 0:30, pushing the jubilant Karolyi back as Mary Lou Retton wins the all-around gold at the 1984 Olympics with her spectacular vaults.)
The gymnasts say that they are coming forward now because they do not want Peters to have any more contact with young girls. They also want USA Gymanstics held accountable for not protecting the athletes, according to the newspaper. USA Gymnastics President Steve Penny commented to the OC Register that "USA Gymnastics has room for improvement in handling sexual abuse cases," according to the article, but said that the organization's heart is in the right place.
Peters, whose last great gymnast was 2000 Olympic Trials competitor Jeanette Antolin, is unlikely to be tried for rape, because the statute of limitations in California requires suit to be filed within three years after the attack takes place.
Instead, it appears Peters will be tried in the press.
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