Reporter Tennessee Watson says she was sexually abused by her gymnastics coach when she was a kid in the 1980s.
More than 25 years later, when she learned he still was coaching children, she called the police. Her inside account of the painful process of seeking justice in her own case exposes discrepancies in prosecutors’ responses to reports of child sexual abuse and spotlights a lack of accountability.
In this hour of Reveal, we meet Tennessee, who decides to confront the man she says abused her decades earlier. As she pursues her case, she gets an unexpected response from a police detective and a prosecutor — they believe her and want to take her case seriously. And as her case snowballs, police find other victims.
Tennessee’s search for answers leads her back to one of the people who often shapes the outcome of child sex abuse cases: the prosecutor. But will she get the justice she’s looking for?
Reveal is a weekly radio program produced by The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX.
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