Threats and stalking alleged
Moceanu seeks permanent injunction against father
Posted: Wednesday December 09, 1998 09:20 AM
| |
Once again Moceanu will face down her father in court AP |
HOUSTON (AP) -- Fearful for her life, gymnast Dominique Moceanu is returning to court to have a restraining order against her father made permanent.
The 17-year-old was granted a temporary restraining order against her father a week ago. She has asked state District Judge John Montgomery to upgrade that order and make it a permanent injunction.
Both Moceanu and her parents, Dumitru and Camelia Moceanu, are expected to attend Wednesday's hearing.
If Moceanu's adolescence seemed unbearable, it apparently was idyllic compared to the gymnast's new life as a grownup.
Since October 28, when a judge granted her request for adult status, the 1996 gold medalist says she's endured verbal threats and stalking by her father. Police are also investigating a private investigator's claim that Dumitru Moceanu offered to pay $10,000 to have a friend and her coach killed.
"The threat of danger from my father hangs over me every day," the gymnast said in court papers filed a week ago for the restraining order.
Messages left Tuesday with her father's attorney, Katherine Scardino, and at his workplace were not returned to The Associated Press. Moceanu has, so far, declined the AP's request for an interview about her court battles.
What began as a teen-age athlete's fight for control over her millions in earnings has escalated into a vitriolic fight threatening to shatter her family for good.
"It's just awful," Moceanu's publicist, Janey Miller, said Tuesday. "It is literally tearing them apart."
The stormy relationship between father and daughter caught public notice in late October, when she fled from her home with the help of Marcy and Brian Huggins and her coach, Luminita Miscenco. Huggins befriended the Olympian while performing some work at the $4 million Moceanu Gymnastics Inc. facility north of Houston.
The Huggins have also received a restraining order against Dumitru Moceanu.
Encouraged by fellow athletes, including gymnast Kurt Thomas, to take more control of her finances, Moceanu dogged her father and mother for answers about how her earnings, secured in a trust fund that they alone have access to, were being spent.
"I kill myself training and going to school, and what is he doing with my money?" Moceanu told the Houston Chronicle at the time. "They haven't been working since 1996. Where does their income come from? Me."
After months of stonewalling, the young athlete decided that her only alternative was the courtroom. With her coach by her side, the gymnast gathered her courage and phoned an attorney from a shopping mall pay phone. Within days, she filed suit against her parents, asking a judge for adult status so she could legally begin asking for an accounting of how her trust fund was spent.
She also revealed how her every move was monitored by her father, that she had yet to go unchaperoned on a date. She also revealed that her father has hit her "a couple of times" and that she "never had a childhood."
Dumitru and Camelia Moceanu, both Romanian immigrants, fueled her Olympic dream starting at age 3. They brought her to Houston so she could be coached by Bela Karolyi.
At 14, Moceanu was the youngest American ever to win an Olympic gold medal in gymnastics during the 1996 Summer Games in Atlanta.
With earnings generated by public appearances and competition, her parents built a 70,000 square-foot gym just north of Houston a few years ago.
Copyright 2003 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
| 
