US Olympic medalist Terin Humphrey has been serving as an athlete representative at the USA Gymnastics since 2014. When the entire board of USAG was forced to resign in January of 2018, athlete representatives were allowed to be reelected to the new board which is how Humphrey continued to serve as a representative. She has also been on the selection committees and participated in choosing teams for competitions, including Olympic teams. This was a major conflict of interest, as athletes could potentially refrain from coming to her with their complaints about USAG afraid that this would result in them not being selected. Since 2017, when Ivana Hong was elected as a second athlete representative for WAG, Humphrey’s role was to serve on the selection committees while Hong was the person who the athletes could approach with their concerns.
Humphrey received backlash in October of 2017 for posting a tone-deaf tweet about her Olympic experience on the same day as Mckayla Maroney came forward as a sexual abuse survivor. Humphrey complained about not being able to walk around Athens wrapped around in the American flag.
When critics pointed out that Humphrey is one of the people that should have been responsible for the athletes’ safety, she replied that she did not travel to competitions.
The tone-deafness was revealed again earlier this month when Humphrey posted an unfortunate meme on her personal Facebook page. The meme stated that abuse is just a name that entitled people give to great coaching. Considering the fact that USAG has been dealing with abuse allegations for years now, it is not clear how a representative of USAG could think posting something like this was a good idea. Humphrey later wrote on her Facebook page that she was receiving threats because of the meme but did not offer an apology.
While in the past USAG usually did not take any actions when their representatives made questionable public comments, this time, the Athlete’s Council voted to remove Terin Humphrey from her position.
Paul Ruggeri, the Council chair, said in his statement:
“The USA Gymnastics Athlete’s Council voted to remove Terin Humphrey as a women’s gymnastics athlete representative on the Athlete’s Council and as a member of the athlete selection committee due to recent comments that conflict with the values and goals of the Council and the organization as a whole.”
This is unprecedented. Terin Humphrey is gone and USAG did it *specifically* because of her Facebook comments and openly state that fact. Statement #1 from @Paul_Ruggeri pic.twitter.com/MbO1oZQPTp
— GymCastic (@GymCastic) May 21, 2019
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