HOUSTON (AP) -- Gymnast Dominique Moceanu is relieved to have won court protection from her father, who she claims stalked her and tried to have her friends killed.
But the Olympic gold medalist holds out hope of an eventual family reconcilation.
"I was sad," Ms. Moceanu told The Associated Press late Wednesday, hours after a state district judge ordered Dumitru Moceanu to stay away from his daughter for a full year. "It was a sad day.
"I love my mother and sister and, deep down, my dad. ... Maybe in a year he'll change."
Judge John D. Montgomery issued his ruling after four hours of testimony that included innuendo from Dumitru Moceanu's attorney that the gymnast has been romantically involved with a married man.
In the end, Montgomery ruled that Ms. Moceanu's father -- not any of her friends -- is the current threat in her life.
While nothing during the hearing led Montgomery to believe Dumitru Moceanu set out to harm his daughter, he found the Romanian native's actions qualified as abuse under Texas law.
"I do find family violence ... has occurred," the judge explained. "And it is likely to occur in the future."
The ruling sent Ms. Moceanu into tears of relief and sorrow, while her father sat stunned.
The injunction against him is only the latest chapter in a dramatic sequence that started when the gymnast decided to sue her parents for independence so she could force them to answer questions about the status of her finances.
Ms. Moceanu, 17, was declared a legal adult, with her parents' begrudging consent, on October 28. But that ruling only seemed to make her life more difficult.
Even before the ink was dry on the agreement, Moceanu began haranguing his daughter about her decision to leave home and a 70,000-square-foot gym he built for her in Houston.
Ms. Moceanu said her father told her after her emancipation that a private investigator was watching her every move.
Suspicious that his daughter was being influenced by others, Dumitru Moceanu focused specifically on her beloved coach, Luminita Miscenco, and Brian Huggins, a 32-year-old married man who once worked at the Moceanu gym.
"I told Brian not to be around her," Moceanu testified Wednesday.
In fact, when the Olympian initially ran away and sued for independence, her father reacted by filing a kidnapping charge against Huggins.
Regarding Huggins, Dumitru Moceanu's attorney, Katherine Scardino, stoked the rumor mill Wednesday with sexual innuendos.
Regarding Huggins' relationship with the gymnast, Ms. Scardino said after Montgomery's order that "it doesn't pass the smell test."
Ms. Moceanu, Huggins and his wife, Marcy, have all fiercely denied any notion of a sexual relationship.
Ms. Moceanu said the attacks on her social life are part of her father's scheme to drive her back home.
She said his efforts included following her and testified that she noticed his car parked outside her school on at least four occasions. She saw her father in the car at least twice.
"I don't see nothing wrong with that," her father told the court.
Then, on November 13, three Houston homicide detectives came to her new apartment with news that her father allegedly had asked a private investigator to arrange the murders of Huggins and Ms. Miscenco.
"He's put a contract on these two people's lives," Ms. Moceanu told The AP.
Ms. Moceanu testified she and Huggins so feared for their safety that they left Houston for 10 days, including a brief Caribbean stop, while police investigated the alleged threats.
When asked Wednesday if her father was capable of such a thing, Ms. Moceanu said, "At this point, anything's capable."
Her father rejected the allegations in contradicting testimony. He admitted asking, but not paying, a private investigator to find out his daughter's address. He said he didn't tell his daughter, as alleged, that he had an investigator photograph her every outing.
When questioned about the murder-for-hire plot, Moceanu invoked his constitutional right to not offer self-incriminating testimony.
"He was lying, unfortunately," Ms. Moceanu said. "I have no reason to lie."
For now, Ms. Moceanu says, she's relieved the judge saw the truth -- a pattern of controlling behavior she says earned her slaps whenever she gained weight or was caught with candy. She says her father slapped her in front of gymnastics coaches Marta and Bela Karolyi prior to the 1996 Olympic Games.
"Just because I had candy stashed," she recalled.
After Judge Montgomery ordered Dumitru Moceanu to remain at least 500 feet away from his daughter and to communicate with her only in writing or through an attorney, both he and his wife, Camelia, refused comment.
Ms. Scardino described the couple as "devastated."