Vaulting into Discord

By Jodie Morse

Dumitru and Camelia Moceanu had the greatest of expectations for their daughter Dominique--even before she was born. The Romanian gymnasts, who had defected to the U.S. during the cold war, made a pact that their first-born would follow in their footsteps--even if they had to "just drink water and eat bread." Dumitru had his baby girl hanging by her hands from a clothesline at six months and tumbling in her first gymnastics class at age three. It paid off. Soon after her 10th birthday, they left their jobs in Tampa, Fla.--Camelia worked in a hair salon, Dumitru as a used-car dealer--to follow her to the Houston gym of legendary trainer Bela Karolyi to preside over her vault into the spotlight. In a best-selling autobiography written on the eve of the Atlanta Olympics, Dominique, 14 years old and headed for gold, thanked her parents. "I look in the mirror and see Dominique Moceanu, my parents' daughter," she wrote. "That's good enough for me."

Last week the mirror cracked. Not only did Moceanu run away from home; she also asked for and was granted a 14-day restraining order against her parents and has filed a lawsuit in a Texas district court asking for a divorce from them. She charges they squandered her money and robbed her of her childhood. Now a 17-year-old senior in high school, she is asking to be declared a legal adult so she can control her own finances. According to Moceanu, her parents mismanaged her trust fund, pouring her money into a multimillion-dollar, 70,000-sq.-ft. Houston gym complex and a sportswear line. "Her relationship with her parents was only about gymnastics," says Olympic teammate Shannon Miller, who has been counseling Dominique over the past few months. "She wants to enjoy the sport because she enjoys it, not because it's a job."

The young gymnast barely had an allowance, say former gymnast Kurt Thomas and his wife Beckie, with whom Moceanu lived and trained for four months last year. At one point, the couple say, they gave her $500 to open a checking account. At their suggestion last November, she met with a Dallas lawyer to discuss using the last $173,000 check from her gymnastics exhibition tour to set up a separate trust. When her father found out about the plan, he drove to Dallas and took the check and Dominique back to Houston. Dominique told the Houston Chronicle that beyond just controlling her purse strings, her parents pressured her, and she lived in fear of her father, saying he hit her "a couple of times." Dumitru says he never hit her and maintains she is being influenced by others, including her new coach, Luminita Miscenco. Kurt Thomas told TIME that things were so bad at home that Dominique considered leading the family in an escape from her father: "I know Dominique feared for her mother and her sister. I know for a fact she feared for their safety and probably still does right now."

Camelia Moceanu, however, portrays her daughter as a prima donna. "Everything she asked for she had," says Camelia, referring to an apartment-size bedroom, the gym complex and, last month, a Mercedes on her 17th birthday, which the teenager traded in for a convertible Mustang. Dumitru maintains that while Dominique will not have access to her trust fund until she is 35, her parents built the gym with her knowledge and blessing. Camelia admitted her husband had been strict with Dominique but insisted, "You are strict for their own good, but nothing to the point it was unbearable." Camelia also pointed out that after putting in her day at school, Dominique currently practices only three to four hours, compared with her old eight-hour-a-day Olympic regimen. Dominique's friends, however, warn of the deceptive similarities between real and stage parenting. "I know her parents were tough on her, and I thought they had good intentions," says former teammate Kerri Strug. "But there's a fine line between parents' being supportive and being pushy. A lot of parents try to live through their kids."

It will now be up to a court to decide whether Dominique's parents have crossed that line. As her family's main breadwinner, Dominique will not find it difficult to prove that she can support herself. In August she won the all-around competition at the Goodwill Games. She hopes to compete in the Sydney Olympics in 2000. Last week, though, she sounded more like a child trying desperately to reconcile the very adult goals of professional success and personal happiness. "I hope that after this is all over, we'll be closer than ever," Dominique told the Chronicle. "That would be my dream." But in court, that kind of happiness is often mangled beyond repair.

--With reporting by Deborah Fowler/Houston

With reporting by DEBORAH FOWLER/HOUSTON