Superstar gymnast Simone Biles is demanding answers after a new report claims that USA Gymnastics never investigated if she had been abused by team doctor Larry Nassar even after she expressed concerns about him.
Biles, 22, was one of three gymnasts identified in June 2015 as being uncomfortable with Nassar, but the then-head of USA Gymnastics, Steve Penny, never asked an investigator to speak with her, according to a report on Thursday by The Wall Street Journal.
Nassar is serving 60 years in prison for federal child pornography and sexual abuse charges in Michigan, and has been accused of sexual abuse by more than 350 girls and young women.
Biles, who declined comment in the article, reacted to the report on Twitter Thursday night.
"Can’t tell you how hard this is to read and process,'' she wrote. "The pain is real and doesn’t just go away...especially when new facts are still coming out. What’s it going to take for a complete and independent investigation of both USOPC and USAG???"
Biles, who is gearing up for a run at more gold in Tokyo at the 2020 Olympics, followed with a tweet in the early hours of Friday morning saying that "numb is becoming a normal feeling."
The report says that Biles did not find out Nassar was under investigation until after she had won gold at the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, when she was finally interviewed by the FBI.
USA Gymnastics didn't speak to her about it until after she publicly announced last year that Nassar had abused her, according to the report.
Rhonda Faehn, the director of the women's program for USA Gymnastics during the scandal, stated in Congressional testimony that Biles, Aly Raisman and Maggie Nichols said in 2015 that they had "concerns" about Nassar, according to the report.
Faehn said in her congressional testimony that she told Penny about the concerns in a handwritten note, but he claimed to The Wall Street Journal through his attorneys that she did not tell him Biles was one of gymnasts who raised a red flag about Nassar.
Accusations about Nassar's abuse became public in September 2016 when former gymnast Rachael Denhollander came forward with her story.
Biles ripped into USA Gymnastics before the national championships this past August, saying, "You had one job, you literally had one job and you couldn't protect us."
She spoke with Savannah Guthrie about USA Gymnastics on TODAY later that month, saying it was time for more action.
"I feel like you can always talk the talk, but you have to show up and you have to prove,'' she said. "You just have to do your job at the end of the day. It would almost be better if you just prove to everyone rather than talking, because talking is easy."
The current chief executive of USA Gymnastics, Li Li Leung, said in a statement to TODAY that she was "surprised, deeply saddened and outraged" to learn from The Wall Street Journal report about what happened to Biles and extended apologies to her and her family.