Orange County Register reporter Scott M. Reid, who broke the news last month about sexual abuse allegations against the 1984 Summer Olympics women's gymnastic coach, now scoops the world on Don Peters resigning from his famous Huntington Beach gym and relocating to western Pennsylvania. Peters, 62, who was inducted into the Gymnastics Hall of Fame in 1999, allegedly had trysts with three female gymnasts in their teens, although the only one named is Doe Yamashiro, a former U.S. national team member who at his SCATS
gym in the 1980s. Yamashiro claims Peters began fondling her when she was 16 and that they had sex when she was 17.
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Reid's latest scoop, which he reports was confirmed by SCATS and an Orange lawyer representing Peters, is here.
The Surf City gym has an international reputation for churning out some of the gymnastics world's greatest competitors. Now, USA Gymnastics, the sport's national governing body, has scheduled a
Nov. 11 hearing in Indianapolis to determine whether Peters, who has been temporarily suspended, should be banned
permanently. Yamashiro has said she will testify at the hearing.
Peters has not responded publicly to the allegations, while his lawyer has said Yamashiro never wanted to go public and that this is an invasion of his client's privacy.
Under Peters, who had coached four of the six U.S. women at SCATS, team members won eight medals in the 1984 Summer Olympic gymnastics
competition, the largest medal haul of any American women's
Olympic team. The U.S. took the silver in the team all-around–the American women's first Olympic medal in gymnastics since 1948–and Mary Lou Retton won the gold in the all-around.
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OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.