{"id":6808,"date":"2011-05-19T15:26:22","date_gmt":"2011-05-19T19:26:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/?p=6808"},"modified":"2011-05-19T15:14:04","modified_gmt":"2011-05-19T19:14:04","slug":"sugar-ray-leonard-says-coach-sexually-abused%e2%80%82him","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/?p=6808","title":{"rendered":"Sugar Ray Leonard Says Coach Sexually Abused Him"},"content":{"rendered":"

In his forthcoming autobiography, former professional boxer Sugar Ray Leonard<\/strong> makes a few unexpected accusations.<\/p>\n

In the book entitled \u201cThe Big Fight: My Life In and Out of the Ring,\u201d the ex-fighter reveals darker moments in his life, from cocaine use to growing up in a household with domestic violence and alcohol abuse to surviving a car wreck.<\/p>\n

Still, the most shocking account in the book is when Leonard<\/strong> reveals that he was sexually abused as a young fighter by an unnamed \u201cprominent Olympic boxing coach.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to reports by the New York Times:
\nLeonard<\/strong> writes that when the coach accompanied him as a 15-year-old and another young fighter to a boxing event in Utica, N.Y., in 1971, he had the teenagers take a bath in a tub of hot water and Epsom salts while he sat on the other side of the bathroom. They suspected \u201csomething a bit inappropriate\u201d was occurring, but did not want to question a strong male authority figure.<\/p>\n

Several years later, Leonard<\/strong> describes sitting in a car in a deserted parking lot across from a recreation center, listening intently as the same coach, said to be in his late 40s, explained how much a gold medal at the 1976 Olympics would mean to his future.<\/p>\n

He was flattered, filled with hope, as any young athlete would be. But he writes: \u201cBefore I knew it, he had unzipped my pants and put his hand, then mouth, on an area that has haunted me for life. I didn’t scream. I didn’t look at him. I just opened the door and ran.\u201d<\/p>\n

He adds that when he first decided to discuss the incident in the book, which is co-authored with Michael Arkush<\/strong>, he offered a version in which the abuser stopped before there was actual contact.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was painful enough,\u201d Leonard<\/strong> writes. \u201cBut last year, after watching the actor Todd Bridges<\/strong> bare his soul on Oprah’s<\/strong> show about how he was sexually abused as a kid, I realized I would never be free unless I revealed the whole truth, no matter how much it hurt.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sugar Ray Leonard’s<\/strong> book comes out on June 6th, and it will be interesting to read whatever the boxing Hall of Famer has written in his autobiography.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In his forthcoming autobiography, former professional boxer Sugar Ray Leonard makes a few unexpected accusations. In the book entitled \u201cThe Big Fight: My Life In and Out of the Ring,\u201d the ex-fighter reveals darker moments in his life, from cocaine use to growing up in a household with domestic violence and alcohol abuse to surviving […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":210,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6808","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6808","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/210"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6808"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6808\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6808"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6808"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6808"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}