SAN JOSE — Two weeks after a former San Jose State gymnast got here ahead with allegations of debilitating verbal abuse by her former head coach – and uncovered a 2018 university-led investigation that pressured his retirement – dozens of former gymnasts and their mother and father are coming to his aspect calling him a “bedrock” of this system.
In a “assertion of assist” for former head Coach Wayne Wright, who was accused of instilling a tradition of worry amongst workforce members and calling them “slut” and “silly,” his supporters stated that Wright is “an individual of sound character and integrity.” Wright retired in 2018 after inner investigators interviewed 25 former and present gymnasts, together with employees members, however the college wished him properly on his departure with out mentioning its findings that “verify a training fashion of verbal abuse and intimidation.”
“My first response was, that isn't in Wayne’s nature,” stated Hawley Almstedt, who knew Wright when he was first an assistant coach at San Jose State greater than 20 years in the past. “It breaks my coronary heart to examine another person having such a horrible expertise once I had such a constructive one.”
Former gymnast Amy LeClair, who's now 28, had instructed her story of verbal abuse by the hands of Wright to the Bay Space Information Group earlier this month after the college continued to laud Wright on social media and point out him in a fundraising attraction.
Wright’s departure got here a yr earlier than the college reopened an investigation into former head athletic coach Scott Shaw, who had been allowed to proceed working on the college for greater than a decade after 17 feminine swimmers got here ahead in 2009 with allegations of sexual assault. LeClair additionally accused Shaw of sexual abuse and settled earlier this month with the college. San Jose State has paid out greater than $5 million to settle claims from greater than two dozen victims of Shaw. He has pleaded not responsible to federal legal expenses stemming from these accusations.
LeClair stated she is heartbroken that different gymnasts signed a letter supporting Wright, however in some methods isn’t shocked as a result of Wright performed favorites.
“There have been women who had been within the highlight after which there have been the underdogs,” LeClair stated Friday. “I’m right here for the underdogs, to provide them a voice as a result of Wayne has made them really feel small and afraid.”
On Friday, a lot of these “underdogs” got here ahead for the primary time to assist LeClair and likewise share their tales of bullying by Wright. Patricia Aubel, a former SJSU gymnast, stated she participated within the 2018 investigation however stated it wasn’t simple to return ahead.
“I’ve talked to women who're on the workforce concurrently me and like 10 years later, it nonetheless impacts them they usually’re not prepared to speak about their expertise as a result of they had been apprehensive he’s going to seek out out,” Aubel stated. “That simply exhibits me like how robust of management he even has over their lives now.”
Responding to a request for remark, Wright wrote in a textual content Friday that he appreciates the letter of assist and “I perceive and respect that everybody had their very own particular person experiences and want nothing however one of the best to all athletes.”
He didn’t straight tackle the accusations towards him.
Almstedt, who wrote the supportive letter and despatched it to different former gymnasts and oldsters to signal, stated that Wright had known as her after the story about LeClair’s accusations ran. Though Wright didn’t particularly ask her to put in writing the letter, Almstedt stated, “I believe he was hopeful that someone would.” She provided to take action, and drafted the letter saying that Wright “genuinely cared for us and appeared out for our well-being” and “not certainly one of us can consider this gymnastics household and not using a sense of appreciation for Wayne Wright.”
Inside a few days, she stated, 60 individuals had signed, together with mother and father and a former athletic coach.
Katie Jo Merritt, who competed at SJSU till 2011 and grew up competing in gymnastics with LeClair, was certainly one of them. When the story broke, it was Wright she known as “simply to guarantee that he was OK with all the pieces.”
“It’s a aggressive collegiate sport. It’s not speculated to be a celebration day by day,” she stated. On the identical time, “I don’t discredit what they need to say as a result of that’s what they lived. That’s their fact.”
She signed the letter, she stated, “as a result of that isn't what occurred to me.”
LeClair’s private account of bullying and belittling by Wright throughout her years at San Jose State was bolstered by the 2018 in-house investigation that concluded that Wright had pitted teammates towards one another and “utilized body-shaming as a way of making use of management over the workforce members,” the report discovered.
Wright was capable of end the season earlier than retiring in July 2018 with an settlement with the college “to not search or settle for employment, or volunteer at SJSU, or any of its affiliated auxiliary organizations.”
To LeClair’s twin sister, who was additionally on the gymnastics workforce, the letter of assist from one group of gymnasts exhibits that Wright continues to exert management over the ladies he coached and, in the long run, remains to be pitting them towards one another.
“It doesn’t shock me that he discovered his favorites and that they signed a letter for him,” Allison Falat stated. “If you had been on the workforce, you'll do something to be in his good graces.”
That’s not how Wright’s supporters see it. Wright “revered his gymnasts of all talents and mentored them past purely teaching,” they wrote.
“We couldn't be extra grateful.”