Kelsey Parker Gislason, a well-known social media supporter of the late John Coughlin, who was accused by at least four female figure skaters of sexual assault, has been removed from “any athlete-facing role” within U.S. Figure Skating but is still employed by the organization, USFS CEO Tracy Marek told USA TODAY Sports.
Parker Gislason also issued an apology for her long-time support of Coughlin in a statement to USA TODAY Sports Tuesday night.
“I want to make it unequivocally clear that I stand with the victims who suffered as a result of the actions of the late John Coughlin,” her statement began. “I deeply regret any harm caused by the comments I made while grieving the loss of a childhood friend and reckoning with the reality of his actions.
“The insensitive remarks I made four years ago and the impact they’ve had were never my intention. I am committed to continuous growth, education, and developing greater sensitivity toward survivors of sexual assault and misconduct. I sincerely apologize for any pain my words may have caused.”
Parker Gislason’s Facebook posts praising Coughlin have carried the hashtags #Justiceforjohncoughlin and #TheJohnIknew and in some cases have been visible publicly for more than four years, including as recently as April 26, 2023.
Parker Gislason was hired by USFS in early January 2023 as senior manager, high performance development. Her title now is simply senior manager, according to the USFS website. Marek, who herself had just started as USFS’s new CEO at the beginning of the year, said, “I was not directly involved with her hiring but certainly I was here.”
Marek said in an interview with USA TODAY Sports last Thursday that USFS is in the process of “defining exactly what (Parker Gislason’s new) position is going to look like.” She also said that USFS is “working with her to put her through sensitivity training.”
Said Marek: “Kelsey is taking a shift in her role that I think for her career path and what she’s trying to do in her life is not welcome and is not the direction that she was looking to go.”
Asked what message USFS is sending to young skaters who are suffering from abuse by still employing someone who so publicly supported Coughlin, Marek replied, “She made a bad decision at a time when she was in her greatest moment of grief. She was insensitive for sure, she has deep regret about that and now as an organization, our role and responsibility is also the feedback that I’m hearing from athletes, which is to move forward. That’s what we’re doing.”
After USA TODAY Sports reported last month about Parker Gislason’s hiring and history of support for Coughlin, USFS faced intense social media criticism and pressure to dismiss her.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), a leading advocate for U.S. Olympic sexual abuse survivors, was one of those speaking out against the hiring of Parker Gislason in an interview with USA TODAY Sports.
“I am deeply troubled and astonished by this and I want an explanation for how it could be possibly justified,” he said. “I will consider measures Congress could take after talking to some of my colleagues. It seems to fly in the face of all the reforms we have discussed and studied and really contradicts all the reforms that athletes have championed so heroically.”
The decision to hire Parker Gislason was also strongly criticized by the highest-profile skater to come forward with sexual assault allegations against Coughlin: three-time national champion, 2014 Olympic team bronze medalist and 2016 world silver medalist Ashley Wagner.
“Around the time that women including myself were coming forward with our experiences of sexual assault with John Coughlin, this individual was extremely vocal against the truth of our experiences,” Wagner said in an Instagram story video in May. “… As soon as you put that out on social media, you should become unhireable for certain positions.”
U.S. Center for SafeSport CEO Ju’Riese Colon said in a statement to USA TODAY Sports that she couldn’t comment on specific hirings at national governing bodies such as USFS, “but it should be a non-starter to hire anyone not fully committed to ending abuse in sport. Accountability is an essential piece to culture change — there’s no room to see it differently.”
Coughlin, a two-time U.S. pairs champion, died by suicide Jan. 18, 2019, one day after receiving an interim suspension from SafeSport. USA TODAY Sports, citing a person with knowledge of the situation, reported that SafeSport received three reports of sexual assault against Coughlin, two of them involving minors, prompting the organization to issue the suspension. Coughlin died at his father’s Kansas City home. He was 33.
Less than two months later, on March 4, 2019, SafeSport delivered a chilling assessment of sexual misconduct in skating, saying in a statement that it had discovered “a culture in figure skating that allowed grooming and abuse to go unchecked for too long.”
Wagner, the most successful U.S. female skater of her era, told USA TODAY Sports in a story published Aug. 1, 2019, that Coughlin sexually assaulted her in June 2008 after a party at a national team figure skating camp in Colorado Springs, Colo., when she had just turned 17 and Coughlin was 22.
Wagner said Coughlin got into her bed as she slept at the home where the party had been held and began kissing and groping her. “I was absolutely paralyzed in fear,” she said.
“I remember feeling him shift his weight onto me, remember him putting his hands down my pants, and he was kissing my neck and I was terrified,” she said. “I started to kind of realize where this was going and it was kind of in that moment where I just knew I had to do something and I had to say something.”
She said she pulled away from Coughlin, grabbed his hands and said, “Stop!”
“And he did,” she said, “and he just kind of looked at me quietly for a little bit and then got up and left the room.”
Wagner was the second elite skater to speak out publicly about Coughlin. Bridget Namiotka, who was Coughlin’s pairs partner from 2004 to 2007, when she was ages 14 to 17 and he was 18 to 21, posted on Facebook on May 19, 2019, that Coughlin “sexually abused” her for two years.
Namiotka died July 25, 2022, her parents told USA TODAY Sports. She was 32.
“Bridget succumbed to her long struggles with addiction after several very difficult years of dealing with the trauma of sexual abuse,” Steve and Maureen Namiotka said in an interview. “She was a beautiful child and a wonderful athlete, and we are heartbroken. It is our hope that Bridget’s death will bring new attention to the terrible effects of sexual abuse and addiction in our society.”
Namiotka’s case was one of the three being investigated by SafeSport when Coughlin was suspended. Wagner’s was not. The other two alleged victims of Coughlin who were reported to SafeSport have never come forward publicly.
In a Jan. 7, 2019, email to USA TODAY Sports, Coughlin called the ongoing investigation “unfounded.”
Parker Gislason, who comes from a family of U.S. skating judges and officials and once skated pairs with Coughlin, maintained at least six posts on her Facebook page praising and supporting Coughlin.
“He was a true friend, genuine, empathetic, and always put others before himself,” Parker Gislason wrote on May 21, 2019. “I never witnessed or experienced any poor conduct ever. …” She ended that post with “#TheJohnIknew.”
Also on May 21, 2019, Parker Gislason added a montage of photos of herself with Coughlin, including the message “#Justiceforjohncoughlin” as her temporary profile picture.
Wagner wrote in a text message last month that Parker Gislason’s use of the hashtag #Justiceforjohncoughlin “puts blame back on the women that came forward and diminishes their truth and experiences.”
