For five years, she said she didn’t understand what was happening when Scott Shaw slipped his hand under her sports bra or into her underwear during routine sports massages.
She knew Shaw, San Jose State University’s head athletic trainer, had sought her out after gymnastics practices even though he was assigned to the men’s basketball team. But she always thought it was because he “was there to listen and take care of me.”
Then, a year after graduating in 2019, she discovered, that’s just what Larry Nassar had done. And she began to realize the shock of what Shaw had done to her.
The former San Jose State athlete’s heartbreaking realization came in a series of conversations with Rachael Denhollander — the first of hundreds of gymnasts to publicly accuse Nassar, USA Gymnastics’ fatherly team doctor, of molesting them under the guise of treatment for almost three decades. It became one of the worst sex-abuse sports scandals of all time.
Now, the connection between the two women, a courageous gymnast turned sexual abuse advocate and a young athlete who considered herself sheltered and naïve, is producing another powerful revelation. The younger woman is the first athlete to publicly accuse Shaw of abusing her in the decade after San Jose State brushed away similar allegations from more than a dozen female athletes and excused his behavior as a “bona fide means of treating muscle injury.”
It’s clear now, she said, the…
