Olympic figure skater Ashley Wagner, the 2016 world silver medalist and most successful U.S. female skater of her era, told USA TODAY Sports this week that the late John Coughlin sexually assaulted her in June 2008 after a party at a national team figure skating camp in Colorado Springs, Colorado, when she had just turned 17 and Coughlin was 22.

Wagner, a three-time national champion who won a team bronze medal at the 2014 Winter Olympics, said Coughlin got into her bed as she slept at the home where the party had been held and began kissing and groping her. “I was absolutely paralyzed in fear,” she said.

Wagner also detailed the incident and her reason for publicly discussing it now in a first-person story for USA TODAY Sports.

IN HER WORDS:Ashley Wagner on why she's telling her story now

WHY WOMEN WAIT:Going public makes Ashley Wagner a rarity

Wagner, now 28 and retired from competitive skating, is the highest-profile skater to publicly come forward with allegations of sexual assault in her sport. She is the second elite skater to speak out publicly about Coughlin, a two-time U.S. pairs champion who died by suicide at his father’s Kansas City home Jan. 18, one day after receiving an interim suspension from the U.S. Center for SafeSport.

Bridget Namiotka, who was Coughlin’s pairs teammate from 2004 to 2007, when she was ages 14 to 17 and he was 18 to 21, posted on Facebook in May that Coughlin “sexually abused” her for two years.

USA TODAY Sports, citing a person with knowledge of the situation, reported in January that SafeSport received three reports of sexual assault against Coughlin. His death effectively ended the investigation into those reports, SafeSport announced in February.

While Namiotka is one of those cases, Wagner’s allegation is not. In a Jan. 7 email to USA TODAY Sports, Coughlin called the ongoing investigation "unfounded." His agent, Tara Modlin, did not respond Wednesday when asked for comment about Wagner's allegation.

After years of “completely blocking out” what happened, and of being “afraid” to speak out as a young woman in a judged sport, Wagner said the emergence of the #MeToo movement and the news of SafeSport’s action against Coughlin – an interim measure Dec. 17 preceded his Jan. 17 suspension – spurred her to action.

Wagner said she told two people close to her about Coughlin's alleged assault soon after it happened. USA TODAY Sports spoke with two people who confirmed details of the incident, including one of those she told at the time. The people requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the topic.

In February, Wagner told her story to officials at U.S. Figure Skating, the national governing body for the sport, and after several meetings, she now is working on changes in athlete safety and well-being within the national governing body and speaking in person with groups of young skaters, parents and coaches.

“What happened to Ashley should not happen to anyone, period," USFS spokeswoman Barbara Reichert told USA TODAY Sports in a statement. "Ashley is incredibly strong; not just to have the courage to come forward with her story, but to share her experience publicly to help others. Ashley recently spoke at U.S. Figure Skating athlete safety seminars and her experience and message of empowerment had a profound impact on skaters and their parents."

Wagner’s career was on the rise as she flew to Colorado Springs in June 2008 to attend the USFS camp. She had just competed in the first of what would end up being seven world championships in her career, and she was now among the nation’s top tier in her sport.

One evening, Wagner said, some of the skaters at the camp joined some of the local Colorado Springs skaters at a house party. “I had never really had anything to drink before, and everyone was drinking and I was a teenager and I wanted to see what it was like, so I started drinking,” she said. “Then, as the party kind of wound down, I remember that no one could take me back to the hotel that I was staying at, and a couple other girls were in the same situation, so everyone started going to bed and I was offered up a bed to take and of course, at that point, I thought, ‘Amazing, I don’t want to sleep on the floor. Absolutely, I will take this bed.’ I remember going into that room and I fell asleep.

“The next thing I remember, I get woken up by feeling someone crawling into the bed. I was really tired. I was dead asleep. I just remember not even being that worried about it because I didn’t quite understand what was happening. I just thought someone else wanted a place to sleep too and I was too tired to deal with it.

“After that, I remember (Coughlin) started kissing my neck, and I remember being so surprised and shocked that I didn’t quite know what to do so I just stayed still because I thought maybe he would realize I was still asleep and wouldn’t want to continue on and then I just remember getting really scared when he kept going. I didn’t know what to do. I was absolutely paralyzed in fear and I remember feeling him shift his weight onto me, remember him putting his hands down my pants, and he was kissing my neck and I was terrified. I started to kind of realize where this was going and it was kind of in that moment where I just knew I had to do something and I had to say something."

Wagner said she pulled away from Coughlin and grabbed his hands and said, “Stop!”

“And he did,” she said, “and he just kind of looked at me quietly for a little bit and then got up and left the room.”

For years, Wagner said, she “swept under the rug” what happened to her that night and continued with her career. She and Coughlin were often on the same U.S. teams and at the same competitions, but they never spoke about that night and he never apologized, she said.

“I didn’t really genuinely process what this was until the start of the #MeToo movement,” she said. “Hearing other women come forward with their stories, it kind of made me reflect on this experience in a completely different manner. I had always felt violated but something within that movement really showed me that I was violated and I did have my safety and comfort taken away from me that night.”

Wagner's career has been marked by a boldness that has seen her take on issues as varied as Russian President Vladimir Putin's anti-gay propaganda law before the 2014 Sochi Olympics and the vagaries of her sport's arcane judging system. She now has a new focus.

“I’m known to speak my mind,” she said. “I’m a strong woman. I’m an opinionated woman. I think it’s important for people to see that things like this can happen to anybody. I’m tough as nails but something this horrifying still happened to me. It’s not enough for me to be a strong woman to make things like this not happen.

“If I’m going to be putting a problem out there into the universe, I want to be able to put a problem out there but also do something about it.”

If you are a survivor of sexual assault, you can call the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 800.656.HOPE (4673) or visit hotline.rainn.org/online and receive confidential support.