An emotional and tearful Simone Biles slammed USA Gymnastics on Wednesday in the wake of the sexual abuse scandal involving former team doctor Larry Nassar.
“It’s hard coming here for an organization and having had them fail us so many times,” said Biles, who began to cry while speaking to the press at a training session for the United States Gymnastics Championships in Kansas City, Missouri.
“We've done everything that they asked us for even when we didn't want to and they couldn't do one damn job. You had one job, you literally had one job and you couldn't protect us,” she continued.
The four-time Olympic gold medalist posted a tweet on Aug. 4 expressing her anger after a Congressional investigation found USA Gymnastics and the United States Olympic Committee enabled Nassar’s behavior.
Nassar, the former Olympic and national team doctor, was accused of molesting hundreds of young gymnasts, including Biles. He's now serving a life sentence.
“The more I learn, the more I hurt,” Biles wrote on Twitter. “USAG failed us. USOC failed us. Many failed us. And they continue to fail us. Real and actual change isn’t easy but it’s clear there’s a lot more work that needs to be done.”
Biles, 22, said she still carries emotional scars from her experience with Nassar.
“Every time I go to the doctor or training I get worked on and it's like I don't want to get worked on, but my body hurts.” she said.
“I'm strong. I'll get through it, but it's hard,” she added.
USA Gymnastics responded to Biles’ remarks, acknowledging it still had work to do.
"We at USA Gymnastics have made a lot of progress in strengthening our athlete safety measures and putting our athletes first, but we know we have more to do," the governing body told NBC News. "One of our goals is for our athletes to feel comfortable in speaking up and sharing their opinions, and we are listening to what they have to say."
Biles was initially hesitant to speak out about what happened with Nassar. Last year, she told TODAY's Hoda Kotb how she and her teammates managed to compete while keeping a dark secret.
“We're very good at compartmentalizing things, so we just kind of push it in the back of our heads because we don't want anyone to think of that and we don't want ourselves to think of that,” she said.