Minute 16: Tonya Harding Claims Goons Raped Her Into Silence

She couldn't tell what she knew about the attack on Nancy Kerrigan, she says, because Jeff Gilloly and unseen thugs raped her at gunpoint into remaining silent.

After meeting with investigators, Harding claims, an abusive Gillooly and two other men brought her to a secluded mountain spot to frighten her into silence.

This is going to shock you really bad. When I got back [from the competition] before the [1994] Olympics . . . we ended up seeing the lawyers, and right before I went in to see the FBI people to tell them the truth of what I knew [about the attack on Kerrigan], at that point, him [Jeff] and two other guys - don't know who they were because I couldn't see who they were . . . they were in a different car - decided to drive me up into the mountains, put a gun to my head, and take themselves upon me.

Q: All three of them?

Yeah. He stood there and watched the other two men do it. And he decided to do it, too. They said, if I didn't cooperate and say exactly what he [Jeff] told me to say, they were going to take me out. I had a gun at the back of my head and [was raped] on the back of a truck of a car, and they told me, 'This is what you are going to say. This is what you are going to do, and if you don't, you're not going to be here anymore.' I was screaming , yelling, bleeding. I was totally bloody by the time I got home.

Q: What were you thinking?

"That I wished they had pulled the trigger . . . Why people don't understand why I didn't come forward [regarding the Kerrigan attack]. That's the reason I didn't come forward."

But she also claims to have not known anything worth intimidating her over:

It was like, two days later when things started breaking in the news, and the media or police, or whatever, was involved or whatever . . . somebody said Jeff was involved, and I was involved, and some body else, and I was like, 'Well, I'm not even involved. I don't even know what is going on here.'

So what point would there be to intimidating her into silence? She says she knew nothing at all. The only possibility is that Gillooly was relying on her to provide a false alibi, and intimidated her into reasserting it.

It's just absolutely bone-chillingly horrible if it's true, but it's, you know, not.

Hmm... I'm in trouble for assault and conspiracy. How do I get out of this? Oh, I know. I'll commit kidnapping, assault with a deadly weapon, more conspiracy, and rape.

Thanks to dri.

posted by Ace at 09:23 PM

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