Valeri Liukin was upset with his newest student, Andrea Orris, almost immediately.
“We had a rough start,” Orris recalled.
It was 1999, and Orris had just joined the World Olympic Gymnastics Academy, the about to be internationally renowned Plano, Texas, gym co-founded and co-owned by Liukin, an Olympic and world champion for the Soviet Union.
Orris, then 11, had been accepted into WOGA in part because of her ability to do a relatively difficult skill into a handstand. But now training at WOGA she was having difficulty replicating the move and Liukin was enraged, Orris said.
“I was a liar, I was lying, he told me I was dishonest, I was lying to get into his gym,” Orris said in a recent interview with the Southern California News Group, recalling Liukin’s comments to her at the time. “It was very intense. He didn’t yell but he was very angry.”
Eventually, the relationship was repaired. Liukin liked Orris’ attitude and work ethic, she said. Orris in turn was devoted to her world famous coach, and trusted him.
So when Liukin offered her some advice about her weight when she was 12, Orris wasted no time following it. She eventually developed an eating disorder that at one point would require hospitalization with heart damage and doctor-ordered bed rest, and led to body dysmorphic disorder that continues to impact her more than 20 years later.
Orris was struggling with an uneven bars skill.
“Valeri said, ‘You know why you’re falling? You’ve gained three or five more pounds on your butt,’” Orris said. “But he said, ‘That’s OK. There are ways to work with that and change that.
“(Liukin said) ‘It’s not a bad thing to go to bed hungry,’” Orris continued, recounting the advice he gave her. “‘Three nights before a competition do not eat dinner and you will feel very light.
“‘And start weighing yourself.’”
Orris was 4-feet-8, to 4-10 at the time. “Might not have even been 70 pounds,” she said.
It didn’t matter.
“I started weighing myself daily,” she said. “That was the first day I started.
“I started anorexia that night.”
Orris, now 33, is the latest former WOGA gymnast to allege she was abused by Liukin, long considered one of the most talented American-based gymnastics coach of his generation.
Multiple gymnasts allege Liukin routinely berated, belittled and screamed at them, that he forced them to compete and train on broken bones or when they were ill, and in some cases they were fat-shamed daily, according to a Southern California News Group investigation published earlier this month based on confidential U.S. Center for SafeSport complaints, SafeSport and USA Gymnastics documents and emails and interviews.
The alleged abuse led to eating disorders, according to the women. One former WOGA gymnast, who alleged she was verbally abused by Liukin on a daily basis, said she became so depressed by his bullying that she attempted suicide.
Some of the gymnasts were as young as 10 years old at the time of the alleged abuse.
McKenzie Wofford, a former Team USA and WOGA athlete, said in a formal complaint to the U.S. Center for SafeSport that when she complained of having stomach issues at a U.S. national team training camp at the Karolyi Ranch in Texas, Liukin “FORCED me to show the trainer my diarrhea after I went one time in front of everyone.”
Megan Marenghi, a former WOGA gymnast, alleged in interviews with the U.S. Centre for SafeSport and SCNG that she witnessed Liukin push his daughter, Nastia Liukin, the 2008 Olympic all-around champion, “up against the wall” during training. Marenghi said she also saw Liukin “drag (Nastia Liukin) into his office and scream at her. She would come out bawling her eyes out.”
Liukin, 55, has been under investigation by the U.S. Center for SafeSport since at least Jan. 27, according to SafeSport emails and documents obtained by SCNG. USA Gymnastics CEO Li Li Leung, Stefanie Korepin, USA Gymnastics’ chief programs officer, and Annie Heffernan, the organization’s vice president for the women’s program, have been aware of abuse allegations against Liukin since at least Feb. 9, according to a series of email exchanges between top USA Gymnastics officials and former WOGA gymnasts.
Yet Liukin has been considered by USA Gymnastics for the most high profile coaching position in the sport, women’s national team high-performance director, and this week is the head coach for Team USA at an international competition in Stuttgart, Germany. Heffernan, is the head of the U.S. delegation at the Germany event.
Liukin has not responded to repeated phone messages and emails requesting comment, including an email detailing the allegations outlined in this article.
Role undermines pledges by USA Gymnastics
Liukin’s continued high profile presence in the sport undermines the repeated pledges by Leung and other top USA Gymnastics officials and coaches to athletes, Congress and the public that the organization is committed to changing the culture of abuse within the American sport that enabled the predatory behavior of former U.S. Olympic and national team physician Larry Nassar, former Olympic head coaches Don Peters and John Geddert and others, former Olympic and national team members maintain.
Liukin was a long-time member of the inner circle of former U.S. national team directors Martha and Bela Karolyi who controlled the U.S. women’s program for parts of four decades.
“I was just totally whacked over the side of the head by this gut punch,” said Jessica Howard, a former U.S. national team member and Nassar survivor, when informed of Orris’ allegations. “After everything that has been done, all the information that has come out, all of the corruption that has been revealed, all of the promises of cultural and systemic change that has poured out from USA Gymnastics in order to keep themselves intact as an organization following the Nasssar scandal, and then to hear something is like reading an article that might have come out before Nassar.”
“It’s incredibly destabilizing and disheartening to me as a victim (and) absolutely appalling to think that they are still operating this way … just brazenly operating this way,” continued Howard, a former USA Gymnastics board member. “How they can work with their athletes right now? Not only is he under investigation, but the number of athletes who have talked about him in the past. He is part of the Karolyi mechanism and there’s so much evidence of him being incredibly abusive.
“And what’s bothering me right now most I think is you can read in the (SCNG) stories … the fact that he has basically assisted in their physical harm, their self harm, their anorexia, their bulimia, and their suicide attempts, that in of itself should be enough to disqualify him from any position to even working with kids, let alone in a gym that is sanctioned by USA Gymnastics and especially not given a job by USA Gymnastics to have more power over the entire program. I’m dumbfounded.”
The allegations against Liukin have also cast a shadow over the legacy of the most successful gym in American gymnastics history. Between the 2003 World Championships and 2016 Olympic Games, WOGA athletes won 32 Olympic or Worlds medals, 17 of them gold, including the 2004 and 2008 Olympic individual all around titles.
USA Gymnastics received complaints of alleged verbal abuse, fat shaming and pressuring athletes to train and/or compete with broken bones as early as 2011, according to interviews.
John Wofford, father of McKenzie Wofford, said he complained about Liukin to USA Gymnastics CEO Steve Penny in 2011.
“We had several calls back and forth,” John Wofford recalled in an interview with SCNG. “(Penny) openly admitted he knew and understood what was going on. He said they were taking ‘baby steps’ with Valeri, they could only do a little bit at a time politically” in terms of addressing Liukin’s coaching methods.
Penny, according to Wofford, said USA Gymnastics “was gathering data” on Liukin.
Penny also offered to send an autographed copy of Olympic champion Peter Vidmar’s autobiography. Vidmar was chairman of USA Gymnastics board of directors at the time.
“Mr. Penny has no recollection of speaking to, meeting with, or knowing McKenzie Wofford or her parents,” Leigh Robie, Penny’s attorney, wrote in an email. “Taking ‘baby steps’ and ‘gathering data’ are not phrases Mr. Penny would use in conversations regarding such matters. If USA Gymnastics or Mr. Penny had concerns about Valeri, USA Gymnastics and he would have addressed them directly. Mr. Penny did not offer a signed book by Peter Vidmar and would not have done so.”
But Howard, who was on the USA Gymnastics board from 2009 to 2012 said John Wofford’s account rings true. Howard also said Penny, Vidmar and a small group of USA Gymnastics officials kept complaints of sexual and physical abuse from the board of directors.
“I was on the board when families were having these conversations with Steve Penny and Steve Penny was telling them they were gathering evidence,” Howard said. “Of course Steve Penny’s lawyers would say he doesn’t remember ever speaking to them, but everything she says ring trues about the kind of things that come out of his mouth. About him gathering evidence, how he was taking baby steps, sending a book with an autograph from Peter Vidmar. That was the core group.”
Liukin rose, resigned, and returned to USA Gymnastics
Despite the complaints, Liukin continued to be rewarded with a series of high profile Olympic, World Championships, and national team coaching assignments and a month after the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, he was named as Martha Karolyi’s replacement as U.S. national team coordinator.
But Liukin was one of the individuals whose past treatment of gymnasts came under scrutiny when the the Nassar scandal gained national attention during Nassar’s January 2018 sentencing hearing in state court in Michigan.
Mattie Larson testified that during her time on the U.S. national team she “never felt so small and disposable in my life” because of the way she was treated by USA Gymnastics coaches, officials and staff.
Larson said she “spiraled into a deep depression. It truly bothers me that one of the adults who treated me this way, making me feel completely invisible is the new national team coordinator, Valeri Liukin. It troubled me that he is now in that position and I hope for the sake of the current and future national team members he has changed.”
Within days, Liukin resigned from the U.S. national team post.
“The present climate causes me, and more importantly my family, far too much stress, difficulty and uncertainty,” Liukin said in a statement at the time.
Orris was recently interviewed by a U.S. Center for SafeSport investigator as part of the ongoing probe into Liukin.
“It’s just my duty to show what happened and is happening in that gym,” she said. “In my personal opinion, I don’t think (Liukin) should be around children and he shouldn’t be coaching them. But I don’t want (whether or not he is banned from the sport) on my shoulders.”
Orris followed Liukin’s advice on how to lose weight immediately.
“I didn’t get home from practice until around 8:30 that night,” she said. “My family usually ate around 6 to 6:30. That very night I put food in a bowl and left it dirty in the sink so it would look like I ate. Even at 12, I knew my parents wouldn’t like that I wasn’t eating.”
Overnight her weight became an obsession for Orris.
“After that, every single practice revolved around my body and what I weighed,” she said. “It was never again about gymnastics after that day.”
She started skipping meals. “I would miss one or two meals a day, then it turned into not eating at all.”
Pinched every day
Orris wasn’t alone in focusing on her weight.
“Valeri would pinch me every day. Pinch me in the inner and outer thigh, my lower back and my hips,” Orris said. “He would say, ‘Just checking, just checking to see if you were in shape.’”
Orris said she developed “very bad body dysmorphia. I thought I was very fat, disgusting.
“We were required to be homeschooled. We weren’t ever around other peers our age who looked normal. You were only around elite gymnasts all day. You didn’t see normal kids.
“When you have (body dysmorphia), your mind really pulls tricks on you. You see fat rolls but it was all in my head. They didn’t exist it was only in my mind.”
She became bulimic, riding a daily roller coaster of binging and purging. By 14 she was ready to get off the ride.
“At 14 I had had enough,” Orris said. “I told my parents I didn’t love gymnastics anymore and I wanted to quit.
“They said OK.”
The family met with Liukin at WOGA.
“He said it was really normal, girls want to quit at that age, they want to be social and want to go to high school,” Orris said, recalling Liukin’s reaction during the meeting with her and her parents. “He encouraged me to keep coming. He did it in a very light way.”
But when her parents left, Orris said, Liukin took a different approach.
“He pulled me over, ‘How could you do this to your parents? How could you do this to your family after they spent all this time and money on this? All the hours of driving you back and forth. The least you could do is give them a college scholarship. If you quit today you’ll be a quitter for the rest of your life,’” Orris recalled.
“So I said OK. I couldn’t let all these people down.”
So she continued training with Liukin. And she continued the daily cycle of binging and purging.
“At one point a teammate was suspicious that I was bulimic and told (the coaches) that I was bulimic and Valeri told them to mind their own business and not to bring it up again,” Orris said.
Orris was 17 when she finally told her parents about her eating disorders. Her health was failing and an electrocardiogram revealed some disturbing results.
“I was having heart issues,” she said. “My heart valve was leaking and my aorta was enlarged.”
She was admitted into an in-patient rehab program at Dallas Children’s Hospital and placed on doctor-ordered bed rest.
When she was 18 she checked herself out of the program.
“They did another EKG,” she said. “Heart was stronger but still not cleared for exercise.”
She returned to WOGA and told Liukin of her experience. Liukin in turn, Orris said, pressured her to work out.
“He never said, ‘You’re fat,’ but he said, ‘At least do some conditioning, go into the back gym and do some ab conditioning,’” she said.
It wasn’t until Orris was attending Illinois State, where she was a standout member of the gymnastics team, that she finally shook her eating disorders.
“[The eating disorder] kind of cured itself after I left that environment,” she said. “Just a matter of getting out of my depression.
“I for sure still battle with body dysmorphia. Any more if I gain a couple of pounds I think everyone will notice but I’m much more mature about it. I know it’s in my head and I’m able to talk myself out of it. It’s alright.”
Orris attended a WOGA reunion event in the summer of 2014 to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the founding of one of the most successful gyms in the sport’s history. It was at the reunion that Orris saw Liukin for the first time in years.
“The first thing he did was look me up and down and say, ‘You look good,’” Orris said. “Why did you comment on my body? I just thought it was so weird that you haven’t seen me in so many years and the first comment you make is about my body?”
It would take Orris another four years to come to terms with her alleged abuse.
“I didn’t realize until I was 29 that this was abuse,” she said. “I just thought it was the nature of the sport, which it is. But it’s also abuse.
“I wish I had told someone about it (when she was at WOGA). At this point, I have told someone. People know about it at USA Gymnastics and they’re not doing anything.”
And so Orris has joined those speaking out about Liukin.
“I just feel so protective of the next generation,” she said. “I feel like this is ridiculous. I have a hard time grappling with why no adult is doing anything about this.
“I remember thinking (when she was competing), ‘Who is going to save me? Who is going to help me?’
“I want to be the person I longed for when I was going through it.”
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Valeri Liukin to coach Team USA while under SafeSport investigation for abuse
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Source: Orange County Register
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