Olivia Dunne joins Taylor Swift TikTok trend referencing ‘asylum’ to recount experiences at USA Gymnastics Texas abuse ranch where Larry Nassar preyed on victims, including Simone Biles
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 post on TikTok.
More than a hundred athletes, including gold medalists Simone Biles and Aly Raisman, allege they were sexually assaulted by Nassar at the Karolyi Ranch in Huntsville, Texas.
Dunne was a member of the junior national team that trained at the Texas camp as part of the USA Gymnastics program.
The collegiate gymnast, who has eight million followers on TikTok, referenced the ranch in a recent post, calling it a “haven.”
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 the Karolyis 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 set to a Taylor Swift song to share photos of the Karolyi ranch
More than a hundred athletes say they were sexually assaulted 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 they raised me.”
Dunne has previously spoken about the USA Gymnastics training camp and the scandals at the ranch.
“I would leave my family for a week every year to go to the US training camp, which obviously had terrible scandals and that whole environment wasn’t so good,” she said in an interview on the Full Send podcast last year.
“There, I was part of the United States national team. I decided when I was 16… USA Gymnastics fell apart while I was in that program and I was like, ‘I’m just going to be happy to continue on 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 the athletes while he worked at Michigan State University and USA Gymnastics.
The doctor also admitted to possessing child pornography, and more than 100 women have demanded more than $1 billion from the federal government over the FBI’s failure to arrest him.
He was sentenced in federal court in 2017 to 60 years in prison for possessing child pornography. The following year, Nassar was sentenced to 175 and 125 years in prison, respectively, by two separate Michigan courts for assaulting gymnasts in his care.
Simone Biles among athletes abused by former team doctor
Biles, a four-time Olympic gold medalist, trains at Karolyi Ranch in 2015
In 2018, USA Gymnastics terminated its agreement with Karolyi’s coaching camp after the abuse was uncovered during an investigation.
Last week, the U.S. Department of Justice announced a $138.7 million settlement Tuesday 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 to attack him. victims before his arrest.
Combined with other settlements, $1 billion has now been set aside by various organizations to compensate hundreds of women who said Nassar assaulted them under the guise of treatment for sports injuries.
Simone Biles publicly broke her silence in January 2018, revealing in a powerful tweet that she was one of Nassar’s victims.
Pictured are Martha and Bela Karolyi, for whom the Karolyi Ranch is named.
Gymnast training during a morning workout at Karolyi Ranch in 2011
In her statement, she also shared her heartbreak at having to continue training at Karolyi Ranch, the former USA Gymnastics national training center, where she and other gymnasts were mistreated by the disgraced doctor.
“It took me a long time to write this, probably a few days, because every time I went to write I started to get angry and couldn’t get out of it,” a- she declared.
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 on behalf of others.
During the #MeToo campaign, McKayla Maroney shared her story, saying Nassar began abusing her when she was 13 and the abuse didn’t stop until she left the sport in 2017 , at the age of 20.
