The creator, Ashlee Orndorff, recounts her story of being a talented young basketball player who was sexually abused by her AAU coach, Matt Williams, starting at age 15. She details the long-term impact of the abuse, including having a child she gave up for adoption and the derailment of her basketball career. Orndorff then explains her decision to report the abuse to the AAU in 2018, describing the dismissive and re-traumatizing investigation process that ultimately cleared her abuser. The video concludes with her reflecting on her healing journey and calling for reform within youth sports, supported by text cards detailing the findings of a ProPublica and Washington Post investigation.
Post caption
This video contains descriptions of sexual abuse.
At 15, Ashlee Orndorff was a rising basketball star in Hawthorne, Nevada. She won three state titles and was named Nevada’s Gatorade Player of the Year as a high school senior in 2000, setting records she still holds. But behind her success on the court, Orndorff says she was carrying a terrible secret: Her Amateur Athletic Union coach, Matt Williams, had been sexually abusing her.
Years later, in 2018, Orndorff came forward and submitted a 34-page account documenting the abuse to the AAU. Its review board did not interview witnesses or introduce records that could corroborate her account. It cleared Williams of wrongdoing and reinstated him to his $84,000 position as an AAU officer.
Orndorff’s story is part of a larger investigation into how the AAU fails to protect its young athletes. After a 2011 child sexual abuse scandal, the organization promised “historic” reforms to protect young athletes. But a ProPublica and Washington Post investigation found that many of those promises were never fulfilled. The AAU also said it would bar coaches banned for misconduct by other youth sports organizations. But our reporters found eight banned coaches working with children in the AAU.
Watch Orndorff share her story and read the full investigation at the link in bio.
Transcript
Was 15 years old when my basketball coach started abusing me. By the time I tried to report him, he was a top executive at AAU. My name is Ashley Orndorff, and I'm from Hawthorne, Nevada, and I loved playing basketball. I started playing basketball when I was three years old. I just fell in love with the game, and I was actually pretty good. Ashley Ordon, one of the best girls players in the state. But for all those years on the court, I carried a terrible secret with me. My AAU coach, Matt Williams, was sexually abusing me. By my, I believe, third practice, he had cornered me outside of a bathroom and, sexually assaulted me. This was a person that, to me, was kind of the gatekeeper to my dreams and my career and my future, so I kept it quiet. Very quickly, it wasn't about the acquisition of a college scholarship. It became more about his perpetual and continued and relentless abuse of me. It resulted in the birth of a child that I gave up for adoption at the age of 19. I lost years of development and growth. It lasted up until I was about 35 years old. I started to kind of snap into reality a bit. I reported the abuse in early two thousand eighteen to AAU. I submitted a 34 page narrative documenting all of the abuse. I was met almost with anger and disdain by the board. They were attacking my character and my character as a child. It felt like the abuse all over again. In tier, when AAU cleared Matt Williams, I had to read in papers that once wrote about my greatness, talk about my credibility as a human. In 2024, Matt Williams passed away. Up until his death, he continued to work with kids in the Reno area and actually all over the country. I hope that AAU has the reform that they have been talking about for the last couple decades because they need it. Today, I'm actually doing pretty good considering everything that I've been through. I have better relationships with friends and family no. Better, but I go on with better armor today than I did when I was a kid.
