COLORADO SPRINGS – All these years we thought she was chasing a dream when Chris Witty was really running from a nightmare.

She was just 4 years of age when a family friend first molested her. Afterward he warned her, "Don't tell your dad. Don't tell anyone."

She didn't tell. Not even after she put a stop to it seven years later. No, Witty slipped on speed skates, hopped on a bike and ran.

Driven by her torment, she skated to three Olympic Games and, at the 2002 Games in Salt Lake City, won the gold medal at 1,000 meters. The bike took her to a fourth Olympics.

She could skate a world record, but she couldn't outrun her ghosts. "Don't tell anyone." Nearly 20 years later his warning still echoed through her head, haunting her.

At age 30 and on the brink of competing in the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy, her fifth Games, Witty is finally chasing the ghost she has tried to flee for so long, going public about her abuse.

"Because abuse of any kind thrives off of secrecy," said Witty, who qualified for Turin at 500, 1,000 and 1,500 meters at last month's U.S. Olympic speedskating trials. "And that's why it exists and why it will continue, so I just felt like if I started talking about it, maybe other people would talk about it and it can be prevented."

Witty's decision has indeed sparked discussion about a topic that affects one of every three females under 18 in the U.S. and one in every five boys, according to Atlanta's Good Touch, Bad Touch program. A recent Witty appearance at a fundraiser for a child sexual-abuse counseling center in Milwaukee drew three times its usual crowd.

Standing in front of the crowd, Witty had a similar feeling to the sense of accomplishment she felt standing atop the medal stand in Salt Lake City nearly four years ago.

"It's an accomplishment that's as big if not bigger than winning the gold medal," Witty said about her decision to speak openly about her abuse and the awareness it has raised.

In breaking her silence, child experts said, Witty is helping erase the stigma that continues to torment many victims, even after the abuse stops.

"A lot of children think that if bad things happen to me then I'm a bad person, and what Chris is saying is no, you're not a bad person," said Pam Church, of Good Touch, Bad Touch. "Sometimes bad things happen to great people. And Chris is showing you can still go on to be all you were meant to be. And that's an incredible message."

It is a message that took Witty years to realize.

"If there's a kid who's facing this right now, they should know that it is wrong," she said. "And it does have a name and it does happen to other people. And it's not their fault.

"I think that's the hardest thing to sort of take in. Even now, I'm 30 and it's still something I think about. 'Yeah, it really wasn't my fault, so I don't have to feel ashamed or guilty.'"

Clarence Platteter was the first person to welcome Walter and Diane Witty and their four children to the neighborhood in West Allis, Wis., a working-class suburb of Milwaukee. Before long, Platteter became a trusted family friend.

"Almost like a family member," Witty recalled. "He was the kind of family friend that didn't even really knock. Just walked in and said, 'Hey, how's it going?' Both parents worked, so if one of us lost our key he was the one who had the spare key. And he took advantage of that privilege."

At the time the Wittys didn't know that Platteter had been convicted of molestation in 1976, given five years probation and ordered to undergo psychiatric treatment.

As her abuse continued, Witty turned to sports as an escape. She raced bikes against her three brothers and neighbor kids, pretending she was A.J. Foyt or Mario Andretti, usually winning. The bike also enabled her to get a newspaper route. Her earnings allowed her to join a local speedskating club.

Witty won her first speedskating race so easily she had her skates off and was sitting next to her mother by the time the second-place skater crossed the finish line.

"As I look back on my past as a kid, maybe sports is what got me away from it," Witty said of the abuse. "And that was something I could focus on. It was sort of my outlet, a way for me to get out of that neighborhood, away from this creepy old