MacKenzie Loesch says she still has a clear memory of the encounter that broke her.
It was 10 years ago, and Loesch was 12 — a rising taekwondo star from a small town in Missouri. Her training facility was two hours away, and her coach, Thomas Hardin, would often drive her there. One day, she was sitting in his car at a gas station when, she says, he handed her a blue rose. He told her he loved her and told her to say it back. Someday they’d get married, he said, according to Loesch.
Loesch had been carrying the secret since she was 9, all while winning gold and silver medals at taekwondo competitions and hoping she’d earn a spot on the 2016 Olympic team. That was the moment it became too much. She texted a friend and finally detailed the abuse that she says went on for nearly three years.
“I’m freaking scared help me,” she wrote in a text message transcript created by police and reviewed by NBC News. “I can’t tell my mom I’m terrified.”
The texts began a yearslong battle for the Loesch family that would mar Loesch’s high school experience and cause her to end her promising taekwondo career. They dealt with the police, social services and eventually USA Taekwondo, the sport’s governing body for the U.S. Olympic Committee. Hardin was never criminally charged, but Loesch and her family still wanted to stop him from ever coaching children again….
