US Olympic Figure Skater Ashley Wagner Brings New Sexual Assault Allegations Against John Coughlin

At 17 years old, future Olympian Ashley Wagner became one of many victims of her fellow US skating team member John Coughlin.

Wagner confessed this week to experiencing an alleged horrifying sexual assault at a Colorado ski camp in 2008, describing a scene of 22-year-old Coughlin invading her bed, probing and attempting maneuvers on her apparently "sleeping" body for several minutes before she fought back and chased him out of the room.

In her confession, Wagner told of a party she'd attended with skating friends while away from home at a camp in Colorado Springs. Believing herself to be safe, she took the bed she was offered rather than drive home.

However, Coughlin used the circumstances as a horrifying opportunity.

"Looking back now, I didn’t understand that his hands knew the way around a woman’s body because he was 22. He was a man," Wagner wrote. "But I was just a girl."

Wagner, an Olympic Bronze Medalist and 2016 World Silver Medalist, is far from the first female skater to come forth with a terrible tale of Couglin's abhorrent behavior, though she's among the most prominent.

Coughlin, the 2011 U.S. Pairs Champion, along with partner Caitlin Yankowskas, was found dead by suicide in January 2019, one day after being barred from figure skating, pending an avalanche of investigations.