An Open Letter To Juliet Macur of The New York Times

Telling the story of a survivor of sexual assault is a great privilege. It’s an opportunity to give an individual back her voice, to provide a platform through which she can share her story, and to help her take back some of that power that was so traumatically stripped from her. But with that privilege comes great responsibility: the responsibility to accurately represent her story, to convey the magnitude of its injustice, and to illuminate, where possible, the failed systems that allowed such abuse to take place.

I was horrified to see you and The New York Times so grossly fail in your journalistic duty to accurately share the story of my dear friend, Morgan White, member of the 2000 US Gymnastics Olympic Team, her sexual abuse at the hands of former Olympic Team physician, Larry Nassar, as well as the longstanding emotional and physical abuse perpetrated by her coach, Mary Lee Tracy, not to mention the toxic environment and neglectful oversight of USA Gymnastics that enabled both.

Last year, Morgan joined the courageous group of women bringing a lawsuit against USAG for its role in enabling Nassar’s horrendous sexual abuse of hundreds of gymnasts. She was quite reticent to openly share the details of her 0own story. It was only when her former coach, Mary Lee, was appointed to a high level position within USAG and you, Juliet, reached out to her that she decided to publicly discuss her experience as a gymnast. She felt that it was her responsibility to speak up about what kind of person and coach she knew Mary Lee to be. She wanted to help bring about change in the world of USA gymnastics and protect future gymnasts from the abuse she experienced. But because of the way you and The New York Times represented her story, I wish she never had.

In the brief paragraphs you wrote about Morgan, you managed to misquote, misrepresent, and even belittle and seemingly attempt to discredit her story. I’m so shocked that The New York Times — the same paper that won the Pulitzer Prize just this April for its previous coverage of sexual harassment and assault — could allow such journalistic negligence and misconduct.

Juliet, I hope you are ashamed of yourself. You forced a survivor to continually re-live the trauma with hours upon hours of interviewing over the phone over the last few months. I can count on one hand the number of people to whom Morgan has told the full story of her sexual assault. Morgan trusted you and you completely betrayed that trust. You told her that her story was powerful (it is) and that it deserved to be heard (it does) and then you twisted it into something else entirely. And for what?

If you wanted a powerful example of Nassar’s abuse, the things that he did to her were a million times worse than “stroking her leg”. Why not describe the way he sexually assaulted her as a teenager alone in her cabin at the Karolyi Ranch? How he used the guise of medicine to violate her so horrifically? How he manipulated her fierce dedication to her sport, her fear that her injury would prevent her from competing, the culture of toxic silence in the gymnastics world to his advantage? The way he drugged her, how she has no memory of an entire day spent alone with him unchaperoned (and yes, touching her in the back of a car) when he took her to Houston to get an MRI? How he gave her the wrong shot in her foot that aggravated her injury, but blamed it on another physician?

If you wanted to reveal Mary Lee Tracy’s true character, maybe you should have described her cruel emotional manipulation as more than mere “haranguing.” Maybe you should have discussed the way she constantly weighed Morgan and criticized her body — calling her fat, restricting entire food groups from her diet, encouraging her to use laxatives, wrapping her body in cellophane and forcing her to run laps around to gym to lose weight when she was a mere 80 lbs. You could have accurately described the hell she put Morgan through the weeks leading up to the Sydney Olympics as she was dealing with an injured foot. You mentioned that she went against doctors’ orders to ice and use a protective boot, but that doesn’t quite convey the way she was forcing Morgan to train in the weeks leading up the Olympics. While other team members were doing lighter routines and being allowed to land on soft surfaces, Mary Lee forced Morgan to do grueling repetitions on hard surfaces despite her injury, grabbing her and digging her nails into her arm while she threatened that she would be on the next flight home if she didn’t “walk normal” when the pain was impossible to hide. Instead you belittled her experience, allowed Mary Lee to seemingly refute the claims without giving Morgan a chance to respond and quickly followed with another gymnast’s endorsement of Mary Lee.

If you wanted to point to the many ways that USA Gymnastics and the US Olympic Committee failed its gymnasts, you had endless fodder. You could have delved into the deep dysfunction of the Karolyi Ranch, where athletes were pushed to breaking, where a sexual predator was given full access to athletes’ (no, to children’s!) solitary sleeping quarters, and where parents were not allowed. You could have enumerated the years of complaints USA Gymnastics received about Larry, yet did nothing and even hid implicating documents. You should have described the way Morgan was tossed aside, not even allowed to speak to her parents, stripped of her Olympic credentials, and even prohibited from walking in the opening ceremony or sitting with her team in Sydney once the stress fractures were found in her foot and she had to pull out of the competition.

You had such a powerful opportunity — to use a survivor’s story to shed light on the deeply toxic, unsafe environment that is the current world of gymnastics, to help bring about change and move this sport in the right direction — but you not only squandered it, you moved it backwards. Minimizing Morgan’s assault by Larry Nassar and publishing Mary Lee’s lies about her treatment of Morgan serve as a warning to other survivors — that same old warning they’ve heard again and again — to stay quiet, to just keep it inside, that people won’t believe your story, that speaking up will cause even more pain, that change is impossible.

Juliet, you brought to life every survivor’s nightmare. You took my friend’s story, her trust, and you twisted it and betrayed her. She told you about years of abuse enabled by USA gymnastics (of which I’ve only highlighted a few examples) and the way she was pushed to the point of breaking (literally) which prevented her from competing with the rest of her team in the Olympics and you made her sound like a whiny child who didn’t get a gold star.

Well, let me tell you a little bit about the incredible woman you just maligned. Morgan is, by far, the strongest person I know. She is deeply kind and compassionate. It was so hard for her to come forward and say anything negative about Mary Lee, even though every word of it was the truth. She has worked so hard to leave the world of gymnastics behind. She’s built a beautiful and meaningful life for herself in Cincinnati working as a special ed teacher for students with severe behavioral issues. She’s learned to channel her incredible athleticism into a serious yoga practice that brings her joy and peace. She is beloved by a group of friends who have never stepped foot in a gymnastics arena and deeply supported by her wonderful family. On top of everything she’s had to withstand over the last year, she’s also undergone multiple hip surgeries concluding in a recent full hip replacement from which she’s still in recovery (but for the record, Morgan has never blamed Mary Lee for her current hip issues like you wrote, she attributes it to her congenital hip dysplasia).

I know she will overcome all of this. She has a deep and quiet strength inside of her that one can only admire. But the thing is, she shouldn’t have to. She shouldn’t have to deal with you and the New York Times misrepresenting and trivializing her story on top of everything else she has and is still working to overcome. No survivor should. You and The New York Times should have understood both the privilege and the responsibility that come with sharing a survivor’s story. Unfortunately, you did not. And for that, I hope you feel truly ashamed.

Sincerely,

Lily McKoy