Riley Gaines touts NY county executive order on girls' sports: 'Refreshing to see strong leadership'
Former NCAA swimmer Riley Gaines joined 'Fox & Friends' to discuss her reaction to the executive order and why she continues to stand for 'common sense' in women's sports.
Former NCAA swimmer and women's sports activist Riley Gaines joined "Fox & Friends" to discuss her reaction to a San Francisco college's suspension of the investigation into a hostage incident where she was held for ransom.
Police said the alleged charges she made were "unfounded," but Gaines hit back, calling the decision by the university police, "abysmal."
Gaines, the director of the Riley Gaines Center at the Leadership Institute and an Outkick contributor, is an advocate for girls in women's sports.
In April 2023, she spoke at an event at San Francisco State University hosted by a conservative campus organization, Turning Point USA, where she discussed her experience during senior year of college competing against transgender swimmer Lia Thomas, who she had tied for fifth place in a national swimming championship.
University of Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas and Kentucky swimmer Riley Gaines react after finishing tied for 5th in the 200 Freestyle finals at the NCAA Swimming and Diving Championships on March 18th, 2022 at the McAuley Aquatic Center in Atlanta Georgia. (Rich von Biberstein/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
After her speech, Gaines was assaulted by a mob of violent protesters that she said stormed into the room, turning off the lights and assaulted her before holding her hostage for ransom.
"There's an abundance of evidence that what I am claiming happened, happened," Gaines said.
"There's audio evidence, there's video evidence, there are eyewitnesses who were there at the time. Heck, the officer who sent me the email saying that the charges were unfounded was being held for ransom in the room with me."
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"So I think this sets a terrible precedent, not just for conservatives or conservative speakers on college campuses like myself. This sets a terrible precedent for every single American. male, female, regardless of race, regardless of sexual orientation," she added.
"Because what our Department of Justice has now done by saying they can't do anything, they can't charge anyone involved here, is they're saying and honestly, they're encouraging, violence and violence against women, for that matter, and the infringement upon our First Amendment rights, our freedom of speech at that. So I think this is an abomination, really. That's how I feel."
Former collegiate swimmer Riley Gaines is sworn in during a House Oversight Subcommittee on Health Care and Financial Services hearing on Capitol Hill December 5, 2023 in Washington, DC. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
Gaines said she felt like her life was under threat while she was held hostage overnight.
"Being held for ransom through the middle of the night in San Francisco by hundreds of protesters, you can only imagine the obscene and profane and heinous things that were being yelled at me, how I was being assaulted in ambush," she said. "I truly, in that moment, I feared for my life."
Speaking to "America Reports" Thursday, Gaines said there were other people who were assaulted at the event and the incident should be "totally unacceptable" on college campuses.
"This would have been handled entirely differently had this been the other way around, had this been flipped, had a bunch of conservative students, Christian conservative students, been protesting a liberal speaker on campus, but that's not happening," she said.
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"We're not seeing that on college campuses. This violence is only going one way and I testified before Congress a few months back, about the rise in violence among left-leaning protesters."
The swimmer said the mob of angry protesters hit her multiple times and demanded she pay each student $10 for ransom.
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