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The Larry Nassar Case: What Happened and How the Fallout Is Spreading
Christine Hauser and
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.
The impact on the sports world
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.
How the abuse came to light
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.
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.
Their voices were heard
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.
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.
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