Kayla Harrison looked up at the judge in front of her and told him that she no longer knew how to be a child.

Harrison, then just 17, had sandwiched herself between her mother and grandmother in the Ohio courtroom, refusing to glance in the direction of her former judo coach , Daniel Doyle.

She spoke slowly and surely about the 33-year-old Doyle. She detailed how he had poisoned her passion for the sport. How he had sullied every inch of her life for years. How she had became undeniably suicidal.

When she was done, she turned on her heels and left not only the courthouse, but also the state and the life she knew, saying goodbye to her home, her training gym and Doyle, the coach whom she had trusted unequivocally and the man who had spent the past several years sexually abusing her.

Harrisons landing place was Boston, where she began anew. She took up residence with a new coach and commenced a new training program carefully crafted to help her regain her will to live and her sense of self and, eventually, her competitive hunger.

Things began to fall into place. Doyle had pleaded guilty in November 2007. By 2008, Harrison had earned a spot as an Olympic training partner. By 2012, she had entirely eschewed that supporting role in favor of being the star of the U.S. judo team at the Summer Games in London.

Harrisons ostensible objective at the London Olympics was clear-cut: to go for the United States first-ever gold medal in judo. But competing and excelling on the biggest stage in sports also enabled the then-22-year-old to exorcise some of the deep-seated self-doubt that was borne out of her years of sexual abuse.

Four years later, even while she painstakingly prepares to defend her title in Rio de Janeiro this August, shes cognizant that theres a bigger part for her to play in life besides being a dominant judoka a role thats more personally fulfilling and publicly beneficial than an athlete whose center of gravity is the training mat.

This month shell be headed back to the Summer Games hoping to give a voice to fellow survivors hoping to use the horrors of her past to help transform how we think about, discuss and treat sexual abuse.