Olympic champ Witty fights against child molesters

CHICAGO - They whisper that her edge may be gone, that only in the deepest pain was Chris Witty able to summon up her greatest performances and now that she has found some peace, some of the passion may have died.

But that is where the misconception lies, because for Witty, a three-time Olympic medal-winning speedskater from West Allis, Wis., the pain is never far from the surface and true greatness never far from her grasp.

"When you do a sport or something like it, you can put all your energy and focus just on this, but it doesn't mean you're not depressed anymore, she explained."

To most, it appeared she had healed, but then most don't understand the indelible stain of child abuse on the victim's soul.

Witty was 4 when she says it started. He was the kindly neighbor from across the alley, the first one to welcome the family to the block, a married man in his 60s who was a talented woodworker and who brought over tomatoes from his well-tended garden - the kind of neighbor who walked in without knocking.

He befriended Chris' father, Walter, who worked the second shift as a welder. One day when Walter came home from work, he left his daughter with the neighbor while he went in to take a shower. It was the first time she says the man touched her inappropriately. It would not be the last.

Witty estimates there were dozens of incidents over the next seven years, each one ending with the admonition that she was not to tell her father. So she didn't. Nor did she tell her mother or her three older brothers, who teased her that the old man liked her, but they had no idea what he was doing.

It turns out the man had been convicted on charges of child molestation three years before his encounters with Chris began. He had been placed on 5 years' probation on the condition that he receive psychiatric counseling.

"And, actually, they did know about it," Witty said of her parents and neighbors. "But I think they believed him because he's such a sweet guy, like everybody's grandfather.

"That's what (child molesters) want, that every adult will trust them with their own children. So there's the mind game, not just with the kid but with the adults too."

Young Chris channeled her anxiety into sports, everything the boys in the neighborhood did and more - playing on their baseball teams, winning the Punt, Pass and Kick competition, running track, playing basketball. At 11, she finally found the courage to tell the neighbor "No" - twice - after seeing a video in 6th grade on "Good Touch, Bad Touch." Twenty-five years after the first incident, she finally found the courage to talk about it.

Already a three-time Olympian in speedskating and cycling, Witty found herself feeling tired, anxious and physically ill a month before the 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake City. Doctors told her she had mono. She knew it was more than that.

Four years before, the neighbor from West Allis had gone to jail for second-degree sexual assault of a 4-year-old girl in the neighborhood. He had served his time and now - right before the Olympics - he was being paroled.

Witty, 30, had baby-sat for the little girl. She had warned the victim's brother to "Stay away from (him)." But she felt guilty as an adult that she had not come forward sooner. Now her family was telling her that the neighbor was out of prison and his wife had died recently, that he was simply an old man and, maybe, he was healed.

Exhausted and feeling stressed, Witty sought help, pouring her heart out to a sports psychologist for the U.S. speedskating team. He told her to concentrate on the Olympics and then tackle everything else. That February in Salt Lake City, Witty won a gold medal with a world record in the 1,000 meters. Then she focused on getting better.

"It was like he made it OK, he gave me permission to go compete," she said of the psychologist. "But when you're overwhelmed, you can't clear your head."

Next she had to talk to her family, made all the more unsettling when her parents did not respond the way she expected - or wanted. Working out on an exercise bike in the training room of the Pettit National Ice Center in Milwaukee, where she competed in a World Cup competition in November, Witty seemed to pedal harder as she spoke.

"It's one of the biggest things that happened in my life, probably the worst thing that will ever happen," she said. "So you assume (they'll say), I'll be there for you.' But, obviously, there are other reasons for them to not be because maybe they feel guilty, they start questioning themselves -What did we do wrong? We didn't know. You never told us, so how should we have known?' So then they need time too, because they're going over the last 25 years and figuring out what went wrong."

She perceived a similar reaction from her brothers but tried to understand.

"They're the big brothers who were supposed to protect me," she said.

It was especially hard for Mike Witty to grasp as the two were "inseparable" as children, "best friends," he said.

"That's where the difficult part was. You go back and say, `When did this happen? How did this happen?' Because we were literally everywhere together.

"It's not anger. It's, `God, if only I would have known.' I don't know what I would have done if I had known, maybe helped be there for her to talk to instead of it lasting as long as it did before she came out and began seeking help for it.

"But it had to be done on her terms. The problem is that in the beginning, Chris wanted us to feel a certain way. We were supposed to be angry. And we were like, `What would you like us to do? Would you like us to beat him up?' We don't know what to do."

For a long time, in part because of her travel schedule, Witty stayed away from West Allis and didn't call home as much. Last November was her first Thanksgiving home in about a dozen years, she estimated.

"It was OK," she said quietly.

The neighbor is in his 90s and ailing, but still lives at home.

"I think for Chris, it's that much more difficult because every time she goes home, she's going back to where a lot of this happened, to the actual physical place," her brother said. "Maybe if our parents lived in a different house, it would be easier for her. But he's out now, still right outside the back door, right across the alley. And when she was at home, (he was) within 200 to 300 feet of Chris.

"I can only imagine how traumatic that is for her."

Therapy has helped. And after initially feeling self-conscious after going public with her story for the first time in October 2004, and at times despondent from hearing similar stories, she said she can handle it better.

"I just feel more open now, socially more comfortable," she said. "I don't feel as awkward. I don't feel like everybody's talking about me behind my back. Maybe once in a while because everybody has insecurities, but once you can get over that one big thing that's causing most of the insecurity, you realize there's a whole other world out there and you see the world differently."

Eager to help others like herself, Witty approached schools in Salt Lake City in an effort to institute "Good Touch/Bad Touch" programs, but she hasn't always been happy with the response, suspecting the "sex education" ring to it has "freaked out" some parents and educators.

In December, Witty qualified to skate three events at the Winter Games in Turin. She was two seconds off her world record time in the 1,000 and after a subpar two years, including a poor autumn affected in part by a groin injury, the prevailing thought is that Chris Witty has somehow lost her edge.

"Chris is a different person now, more relaxed after going through what she has," U.S. speedskating coach Bart Schouten said. "But just because she's more comfortable now doesn't mean she can't get out of her comfort zone and turn it on for the Games.

"I told her she should look at these next Games in (Turin) as a possibility to create another big platform to talk about her abuse and see it as a possibility to help people again."

Mike Witty isn't sure if his sister has lost her edge but he understands the questions.

"People have mentioned to me that she really is different now in a good way," he said. "She seems more outgoing than in the past when she was keeping things inside. Not that it was a good thing, but maybe it was one of her driving forces. Now that she's more content, maybe she's not as worried `If I don't skate fast, these demons are going to catch up to me.' "

Witty's family still doesn't talk about the past much.

"Sometimes you let sleeping dogs lie," Mike Witty said. "She's more interactive with us now, so we take that as a blessing."

Witty says emotionally, she is "in a much better place, so yeah, it is easier. In my everyday life, I feel more comfortable, I feel a lot better and when I'm skating, I don't feel depressed. I feel kind of free and I just have to skate."

Skating always has been her safe haven.

"It was something positive to focus on, something I knew if I was good at, I would be rewarded and I'd be able to travel and get away from here and sort of establish my own life," she said.

"Even when you're going through bad things, it was like, `I still have skating.' Skating hasn't gone as well the last four years, but that's OK because I've done so many other things in my life. And it's not like I'm that far out. I'm still right there."

But then so is the past, right there under the surface.

Even as Witty speaks of being in a more peaceful frame of mind, she spits out statistics that infuriate her: the high percentage of perpetrators who are people the family or child knows very well; the high percentage of incidents that go unreported to police; and that many are cases of repeat offenders but few serve long jail terms.

"Think of all the other problems we'd solve if we could stop that one person," she said. "I don't know why the legal system doesn't put these people away for 20 years.

"It's hard to see how much it hurts. You don't see blood always. If it's long-term fondling, it's always the child's word against an adult's."

That is, until the child becomes an adult and the adult, an Olympic champion. And then her word is loud and powerful.

"I think this is by far my greatest accomplishment, probably bigger than winning the gold medal," she said. "Not just getting over it but being able to help other people and inspire people in such a different way that I never could have done as just an athlete. Being an athlete, you can do a lot for people, inspire them, but this, I think, goes far beyond that."

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(c) 2006, Chicago Tribune. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service.