Lawyer calls for suspension of Olympic figure skater under investigation for alleged sexual assault

Note: This story contains graphic descriptions of sexual abuse that may be offensive to some readers or painful to victims of sexual assault.

The lawyer for the alleged sexual assault victim of Canadian figure skater Nikolaj Sørensen is calling on Skate Canada to disqualify Sørensen from next week’s Canadian national championships, where he and his ice dancing partner are defending champions.

“As an advocate for the survivors, now that these violent and traumatic events have been publicized in USA TODAY, I am calling on Skate Canada to suspend Nikolaj Sørensen prior to the Canadian Figure Skating Championships next week,” Olympic gold medalist Nancy Hogshead, a well-known Title IX advocate, told USA TODAY Sports on Friday afternoon.

“If he competes, Skate Canada will send a demoralizing message to victims of sexual assault. For the sport to effectively combat athlete abuse, law enforcement action cannot wait.”

Skate Canada spokeswoman Karine Bedard did not respond to an email seeking comment Friday afternoon.

The Canadian National Championships will take place next week in Calgary. The ice dancing competition begins on Friday, January 12th.

Sørensen, one of the world’s best ice dancers, is being investigated by Canada’s Office of the Sport Integrity Commissioner for allegedly sexually assaulting an American figure skating coach and former figure skater on April 21, 2012, according to documents and emails obtained by USA TODAY Sports.

The documents state that the then 22-year-old woman was held on a bed against her will by Sørensen, then 23, after a party in a residential complex near Hartford, Connecticut.

“He pinned me down with his left arm above my collarbone,” the woman said in a report to Canada’s OSIC and the U.S. Center for SafeSport, a copy of which was obtained by USA TODAY Sports. “He pressed down hard on my collarbone, causing me to gasp as he inserted his penis into my vagina and placed his right hand over my mouth.”

The report continued: “All sounds had virtually stopped at this point and I felt like I was suffocating under the pressure of his arm on my collarbone and chest. I pressed my arms against his hips to try to get his penis out of me and I was struggling to breathe. At this point I feared for my life and let my body go limp as I lay there and he raped me.”

The woman’s identity is not being released because USA TODAY Sports does not publish the names of victims of alleged sexual abuse.

Hogshead, the founder of Champion Women, a nonprofit legal organization promoting girls and women in sport, confirmed that Sørensen is under investigation but said she could not reveal further details due to a confidentiality agreement required by the OSIC.

Several attempts to reach Sørensen via email, social media messages, his coach and the agency representing him remained unanswered.

Bedard, communications and brand director for Skate Canada, the national governing body for figure skating, said in an email: “Per our policy, Skate Canada has no knowledge of matters before the OSIC.”

Bedard did not respond to several requests for comment from Sørensen himself.

A spokeswoman for the Sport Dispute Resolution Centre of Canada said in an email that OSIC “operates under existing confidentiality parameters and therefore the office does not comment on potential or ongoing matters.”

Although the U.S. Center for SafeSport has been notified of the allegations against Sørensen, it currently has no jurisdiction over Sørensen because he does not skate for the United States, according to a document obtained by USA TODAY Sports. However, that document indicates that SafeSport has placed Sørensen on “administrative hold.” That means SafeSport would open its investigation if he applied for membership with U.S. Figure Skating in the future (a process necessary to coach figure skating in the U.S.).

Now 34, Sørensen competed for his native Denmark early in his career and then represented Canada beginning with the 2018-19 skating season. He became a Canadian citizen in September 2021. He and ice dancing partner Laurence Fournier Beaudry placed ninth at the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing and fifth at the World Championships last year. They placed fifth at the 2023 Grand Prix Final in Beijing in early December and are scheduled to compete at both the Canadian Championships next week and the 2024 World Championships in Montreal in March.

According to the report, the woman said she remained silent for years and never contacted police or sports officials because she feared she would be blamed and no one would believe her.

The report said she sought psychological treatment and considered filing a complaint in Connecticut, but then learned that the statute of limitations had expired.

Then, on July 22, 2023, according to the report, she opened an online article that contained an interview with Sørensen in which he commented on the importance of women’s safety in ice dancing.

“I couldn’t believe the words that came out of the rapist’s mouth,” the woman is quoted as saying in the report. “It was then that I realized that mothers would probably send their daughters to him (as a coach) for training at some point after he retired from competitive figure skating, and I couldn’t live with the guilt of never telling an authority figure.”

According to the report, the woman filed her complaint with OSIC the same day.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Olympic figure skater should be suspended during investigation, lawyer says