In judo, Olympian recovers from sex abuse

In a tin-sided warehouse north of Boston, above Stewy's Custom Cycles along a steep staircase lined with Olympic posters, Kayla Harrison found sensei Jimmy Pedro Jr. and, through him and his dojo, a gentle way back from sexual abuse.

Olympics 2012 | Schedule | Venues | Medals Tally

Moving to Pedro's Judo Center after she was molested by her coach in Ohio, Harrison arrived six years ago as a reigning national champion but also a 16-year-old girl in turmoil. The sport her mother first studied for self-defense had brought her daughter incredible anguish. The solution they turned to: judo itself.

"For a long time, I hated judo, and I hated everything associated with it. And what was once my passion kind of became my prison," Harrison said in an interview at the dojo - or training studio - as she prepared for the London Games. "But training at this level and devoting my life to something, like this, I cannot help but love it - again.

"It's caused a lot of pain in my life, but it's also been the best thing to ever happen to me."

Now 22, Harrison is heading to the Olympics as a favorite to medal at under 78 kilograms (172 pounds). Pedro will be there, too, as the head coach of the U.S. judo team and a mentor who, along with his father, called upon the sport known as "the gentle way" to rehabilitate Harrison from an injury they couldn't see or, really, comprehend.

"When Kayla came here, she was broken down. She was a very confused adolescent who was traumatized by what happened to her, who came here with an extreme sense of guilt, of low self-esteem, of not knowing what she was going to do with her life," Pedro said.

"To say that she's a different person today - I don't want to say that she's done a 180, because Kayla was a strong-willed person and she was goal-oriented and she was extremely hard-working. She possessed those skills. But emotionally and psychologically, she was scarred. Understandably so."

A four-time Olympian who won bronze medals in 1996 and 2004, Pedro has filled his dojo with Olympic mementos. Flags from previous games hang from the ceiling, along with other, one-word banners designed to motivate all who visit, the wrestlers and the judoka, the elementary school students and the would-be Olympians: "Focus." ''Discipline." ''Respect." ''Confidence."

"They are basic martial arts tenets," Pedro said, "but in my leadership program I emphasize those as being important traits to become a future leader and champion."

FOCUS

Kayla Harrison was just 16 when she arrived in Massachusetts - too young for the sexual relationship she'd been having with a man 16 years her senior.

"When I moved here, I had just come out about what happened," Harrison said. "My mother was in the process of pressing charges. The FBI was working on a case. And I was a very, very confused, distraught 16-year-old girl.

"I mean, for half of my life I had thought that I loved this guy, and that it was wrong but it was OK, it was just a special circumstance."

Daniel Doyle, who started coaching Harrison when she was 8, pleaded guilty in 2007 to illicit sexual conduct while taking her on trips to Venezuela, Estonia and Russia over a four-year period that started when she was 12. (Harrison thinks it might have been even earlier.) He was sentenced to 10 years in prison and expelled for life from USA Judo, the sport's national governing body.

Harrison's mother, Jeannie Yazell, feared that keeping her in Ohio would have meant surrounding her with the same influences, including Doyle, and probably would have forced her to give up judo.

"There was no place to go here. ... It was all that she knew," Yazell said. "And I knew that if she just quit she just wouldn't be able to move on, because she loved it."

So, within a month of turning Doyle in, she sent her daughter off to Massachusetts to train under Pedro and his father, Jim Pedro Sr., a seventh-degree black belt and 1976 Olympic alternate whom everyone calls "Big Jim."

"It was the hardest decision her father and I made, moving her away," Yazell said. "How do you support your kid when they're 14 hours away?"

And the fresh start was a rough one.

"Being thrown in here, I had to learn how to run with the wolves," Harrison said. "I hated judo, I hated my mother, I hated Big Jim and Jimmy, I hated everything. I wanted to run away. I wanted to get out. I didn't want to be the strong girl, I didn't want to live up to everyone's expectations of me."

She did try to run away. She thought of quitting judo and of suicide. She was upset that she lacked money and friends. "She was still kind of fragile, doing crazy things" - like remaining in contact with Doyle, Yazell said.

"I was failing miserably at life," Harrison said. "I was a teenage punk. Everyone was wrong in my eyes."

One day after going for a training run she sat down on the steps with Big Jim at his house and watched the sun rise over Arlington Pond. They had a conversation that Harrison calls the turning point in her recovery, yet it was one so routine that the elder Pedro doesn't specifically remember it.

"He said to me point blank, he said, 'You know, Kid, it happened to you, but it doesn't define you. And someday you're going to have to get over it. You can't let it run your life like this.' And he was right. I'm only a victim if I choose to be," Harrison said. "It was some of the best advice I've ever gotten, and it's still true to this day. I'm only a victim if I allow myself to be.

"Jimmy and Big Jim refused to let me kind of go down the wrong path. And they didn't really give me an option. It was definitely not my own mental toughness, but the toughness and the tough love of people around me."