In his new autobiography to be published in June, former boxing champion and "Dancing With The Stars" contestant Sugar Ray Leonard reveals on page 38 that he was sexually molested by his Olympic boxing coach when he was a teenager. In addition to being made to take a bath with another teenager while the unnamed coach watched, Leonard recalls an encounter with the coach in which "Before I knew it, he had unzipped my pants and put his hand, then mouth, on an area that has haunted me for life. I didn't scream. I didn't look at him. I just opened the door and ran."
Leonard writes that "after watching the actor Todd Bridges bare his soul on Oprah's show about how he was sexually abused as a kid, I realized I would never be free unless I revealed the whole truth, no matter how much it hurt." One of Leonard's amateur trainers told the New York Times, "He never talked about that to me and no one in the group ever mentioned it," while his one-time head trainer Angelo Dundee says, "Ray never mentioned anything but I never mingled with anything to do with a fighter except fighting. You never wanted personal stuff getting in the way when you sent a kid into the ring."
The book, entitled The Big Fight: My Life In and Out of the Right, also discusses Leonard's problems with cocaine and alcohol, as well as his turbulent upbringing, and domestic strife with his first wife, included an account "in which his mother stabbed his father in the back with a switchblade…sending him bloodied into the street in search of someone to remove it." Leonard refused to comment to the Times, but he is expected to promote the book when it's released. The Times also notes that Olympic coaches have been accused of molesting their athletes before, and an ABC investigation last year revealed that USA swimming coaches secretly taped swimmers in addition to molesting them.
