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The Larry Nassar Case: What Happened and How the Fallout Is Spreading

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How Did Larry Nassar Get Away With It?

Lawrence G. Nassar, the sports doctor accused of sexually abusing hundreds of young women, committed his crimes with impunity for decades. Here’s how.

“There is now nowhere left for you to hide, Larry.” Hundreds of women say Larry Nassar sexually abused them. It’s one of the worst sexual abuse scandals in the history of sports. And it went on for more than two decades. How did he get away with it? “My real interest, of course, with dance and gymnastics is my role with U.S.A. Gymnastics.” Nassar had celebrity-like status in the elite gymnastics and sports medicine world. U.S.A. Gymnastics gave him countless awards. He was inducted into Michigan State University’s hall of fame and governors appointed him to state licensing boards. He even secured a patent for an ankle brace he invented. Nassar’s patients felt honored to be treated by the best of the best. Nassar typically carried out his abuse under the guise of a medical treatment. He hijacked a rare pelvic therapy, that involves vaginal penetration, and used it to treat all sorts of ailments. He ignored protocol, such as using a glove, asking consent or having a medical chaperone present. “And when I was 14 years old, I tore my hamstring in my right leg. This was when he started performing the procedure that we are all now familiar with.” “The next visit was for my shoulder, which I then found out my hips were out of alignment, which then made my spine and my pelvic bone out of alignment as well. And this is when Larry decided that it was medically acceptable to violate a 16-year-old girl.” When confronted by parents, coaches, and eventually investigators, Nassar said patients may have misunderstood his therapy. Medical colleagues deferred to his expertise After a 2014 investigation cleared his name, Nassar was just reminded to follow procedures. In the training camps of elite gymnastics, where coaches are notoriously hard on athletes, Nassar manipulated girls into believing he was a trusted friend, advocate and even their protector. “You have to protect your athletes. You have to let them know that we care. You have to, not let them know, but let them feel it. Let them understand it. Let them breathe it.” ”He put my picture up on his wall with Olympians. I thought I mattered to Larry.” “You had me so wrapped around your finger, and I still trusted you so much. Even when I was a sophomore in college, and you were the only person I called to help me make the decision to end my gymnastics career due to my injuries. Nassar won over family members by offering a free treatment, a quick diagnosis, or often the pretense of transparency. “At the end of the appointment in your basement, I remember asking, ‘Do I owe you anything?’ Now it seems kind of sick. You got what you wanted.” He frequently molested young girls with parents in the room, using a draped towel or practiced positioning to conceal where his fingers were massaging. “What kind of a person has the audacity to sexually assault a child in front of their mother?” It’s still unclear who knew what when, but for decades Nassar’s employers focused on their reputations and failed to safeguard the young women in their care. When U.S.A. Gymnastics got a complaint about Nassar in 2016, the organization paid the gymnast $1.25 million to stop her from speaking about the abuse. Complaints about Nassar’s treatments reached officials at Michigan State University as early as 1997, The Detroit News has reported. That’s 20 years before the prized doctor was terminated. MSU has said that no one at the University believed that Nassar committed sexual abuse prior to the newspaper reports in the summer of 2016. Nassar’s victims say that if the university had investigated the first complaint, scores of young girls may have escaped the doctor’s abuse. “Larry Nassar did not arise in isolation. Rather we saw the worst sexual assault scandal in history unfold because a predator was left in power for decades. Despite warning signs, despite red flags, despite direct reports of assault.”

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Lawrence G. Nassar, the sports doctor accused of sexually abusing hundreds of young women, committed his crimes with impunity for decades. Here’s how.CreditCredit...Matthew Dae Smith/Lansing State Journal, via Associated Press

Lawrence G. Nassar, the former physician for the American gymnastics team, was sentenced on Jan. 24 to 40 to 175 years in prison for sex crimes.

It capped more than a week of victim impact statements by young women and teenagers who described how, as aspiring athletes, they were sent to Dr. Nassar at gymnastics camps, gyms, his home and the Michigan State University clinic. For decades, he molested athletes under the guise of medical treatment.

One week later, he appeared in another courtroom on similar charges. After more than 60 women testified — including some of the same athletes who spoke at the earlier sentencing — he was sentenced to 40 to 125 years in that case.

Here is a look at coverage by The New York Times.

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Anna Dayton gave a victim impact statement at the sentencing hearing on Tuesday.Credit...Brendan McDermid/Reuters

There have been complaints that organizations and people who could have stopped Dr. Nassar years ago did not act. But after more than 100 young women testified in January, events began to move swiftly.

Much of the criticism has centered on Michigan State University, which employed Dr. Nassar and received reports of sexual abuse by him as early as the 1990s. On Jan. 23, the N.C.A.A. opened a formal investigation into how the university handled the case, and state and federal agencies have turned their focus to what officials there knew and when. Student-athletes who were abused said they felt betrayed by the institution.

The university’s athletic director, Mark Hollis, announced his resignation on Jan. 26, two days after Lou Anna K. Simon, the M.S.U. president, resigned under pressure.

On Jan. 22, U.S.A. Gymnastics announced that several of its board members had stepped down, including its chairman, Paul Parilla; vice chairman, Jay Binder; and treasurer, Bitsy Kelley. Later that week, the head of the United States Olympic Committee, Scott Blackmun, threatened to decertify the federation if its entire board did not resign within six days, and U.S.A. Gymnastics confirmed that it would comply.

The federation also cut ties with a private training center in Texas owned by Bela and Martha Karolyi, where some of the abuse occurred, and Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas announced that he had asked the Texas Rangers to investigate allegations of sexual assault at the center. Simone Biles, one of the most decorated gymnasts in history, had said she dreaded returning. The Times wrote about the ranch’s connection to the Olympic dreams of many young gymnasts.

AT&T, Procter & Gamble, Hershey’s, Under Armour and Kellogg’s have declined to renew or ended their sponsorships of U.S.A. Gymnastics, as this Times Op-Ed noted in summing up the reckoning, or lack of it, in the sport.

The abuse surfaced publicly in 2016 in a series of investigative reports by The Indianapolis Star. Read about the newspaper’s role in the case here.

The Star first reported that U.S.A. Gymnastics, the sport’s governing body, had kept files of complaints involving more than 50 coaches suspected of abusing athletes. In many cases, the newspaper found, officials had failed to alert law enforcement. Read that story here.

In September 2016, the newspaper interviewed two former gymnasts who accused Dr. Nassar specifically of sexual abuse when they were children. Both women said Dr. Nassar had penetrated them with his fingers, claiming it was a medical procedure. (While a treatment called pelvic floor physical therapy exists, it is performed only with safeguards, and under very specific circumstances.) Read that story here.

One of the gymnasts interviewed, an Olympic medalist later identified as Jamie Dantzscher, remained anonymous at first. The other, Rachael Denhollander, now 33, agreed to be named.

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Rachael Denhollander at the sentencing hearing on Wednesday.Credit...Brendan McDermid/Reuters

Ms. Denhollander opened the floodgates at significant personal cost, which she described in a Times Op-Ed. The Times profiled her when she became the last woman — the 156th over the course of seven days — to make a statement at Dr. Nassar’s sentencing in Ingham County, Mich.

In January 2017, Michigan’s Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs suspended Dr. Nassar’s medical license.

He pleaded guilty to 10 molestation charges in November: seven in Ingham County and three in neighboring Eaton County. In December, he was sentenced to 60 years in prison in a separate case that stemmed from more than 37,000 images and videos of child pornography found on his computer. He is expected to spend the rest of his life in prison.

It has become clear, however, that multiple opportunities to stop him earlier were missed. The F.B.I. began scrutinizing him in July 2015, but its investigation moved very slowly. Between the start of the F.B.I. investigation and the publication of the first Indianapolis Star article, The Times found, Dr. Nassar abused at least 40 women and girls.

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More than 150 women, including Olympic gymnasts Aly Raisman and Jordyn Wieber, spoke during the sentencing hearing for Lawrence G. Nassar, a former sport medicine doctor, who pleaded guilty to sexual abuse charges in November.CreditCredit...Matthew Dae Smith/Lansing State Journal, via Associated Press

More than 150 victims directly addressed Dr. Nassar as he sat across from them in the Ingham County courtroom. They were elite gymnasts, runners, divers, swimmers and other athletes. Dr. Nassar, 54, told the judge in a letter that it was difficult for him to hear their statements.

The Times compiled those statements in the victims’ own words here, and collected some of their remarks on video. They were also featured on the Jan. 25 episode of The Daily.

Among them were elite gymnasts like McKayla Maroney, Jordyn Wieber and Aly Raisman, the captain of the teams that took home gold medals for the United States at the 2012 London and 2016 Rio de Janeiro Summer Olympics. Read Ms. Raisman’s complete statement here.

Many of the young women who spoke were accompanied by their parents, who said they had often been in the room as Dr. Nassar surreptitiously abused their children, and expressed guilt that they did not see the red flags.

Judge Rosemarie Aquilina emerged as an unusually fierce advocate for the victims. This video explored how she encouraged more women to come forward by opening her courtroom to those wanting to speak.

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For Victims of Nassar, She’s Judge and Therapist

After opening her courtroom to athletes, coaches and parents, Judge Rosemarie Aquilina has prompted dozens more to share their stories of sexual abuse by the former sports doctor Lawrence G. Nassar.

“You may find it harsh that you are here listening. But nothing is as harsh as what your victims endured for thousands of hours at your hands.” “Spending four or five days listening to them is significantly minor.” “You are so strong and brave. And you are not broken — you are glued back together perfectly.” “Thank you, your honor.” “Thank you for being part of the sister survivors. Your voice means everything.” “Red flags may have been there, but they were designed to be hidden. You aren’t alone in this.” “Your priority should have been my health. Yet your priority was solely to molest me.” “You used my vulnerability at the time to sexually abuse me. I reported you to police immediately. And you had the audacity to tell them I had misunderstood this treatment because I was not comfortable with my body. How dare you.”

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After opening her courtroom to athletes, coaches and parents, Judge Rosemarie Aquilina has prompted dozens more to share their stories of sexual abuse by the former sports doctor Lawrence G. Nassar.CreditCredit...Matthew Dae Smith/Lansing State Journal, via Associated Press
A correction was made on 
Jan. 25, 2018

An earlier version of this article referred incorrectly to the location of Lawrence G. Nassar’s guilty pleas in November to 10 molestation charges. He pleaded guilty to seven charges in Ingham County, Mich., and three in neighboring Eaton County. It is not the case that all 10 charges were in Ingham County.

How we handle corrections

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