Larry Nassar—A Name that Will Live in Infamy

Having visited Michigan State University just once, on a snowy day in January 1972, I have neither affiliation nor animosity toward it. My feelings are entirely neutral. But the green-and-white “Sparty” brand has now taken a huge hit. I refer, of course, to the sex-abuse scandal perpetrated by former MSU faculty member Larry Nassar.

A brief bio of this man might be helpful. He was born in 1963, studied kinesiology at the University of Michigan and then osteopathic medicine at MSU. Shortly after getting his medical degree, he married Stephanie Anderson; they had two daughters and a son. Team physician for the women’s gymnastics and rowing teams at Michigan State, he also taught first- and second-year medical students how to give physical exams (an innocuous matter until his crimes came to light). Nassar, the main trainer for the U.S. women’s gymnastics team, was part of four Olympic Games: Atlanta in 1996, Sydney in 2000, Beijing in 2008 and London in 2012. He won numerous honors, grants and awards. Nassar’s office at MSU was a virtual museum featuring photos of him with gold-medal winners, ribbons, plaques and so forth. Respected, handsomely paid and in the midst of what should have been a very fulfilling career, he ruined his own life and caused incalculable damage to others. Two suicides—a victim and the father of a victim who at first refused to believe his daughter’s claims—can be indirectly attributed to Larry Nassar.

156 and counting

Some 156 young women claim or claimed (one is dead, you know) to have been abused by Nassar under the guise of medical treatment. In his campus office, at the USA Gymnastics National Team Training Center (a.k.a. “Karolyi Ranch”) near Huntsville, Texas and at numerous gymnastics meets around the world, he did more than tend to sore muscles and torn ligaments. No parent, guardian or chaperone was present when he stuck his ungloved fingers into these girls’ vaginas and anuses—forgive me for being so graphic. While all were too young to understand what was going on, many sensed it was wrong and not remotely therapeutic. In a few cases, he fondled victims’ breasts and made lewd comments. Victims (some prefer the term “survivors”) or parents who tentatively asked about the propriety of Nassar’s techniques were met with a how-dare-you-doubt-me response. After all, he was a big-shot doctor and the girls were dreaming of Olympic glory. He was, they naively assumed, helping them achieve it.

Nassar’s odd methodology was something of an open secret among the young athletes. They had a snarky name for him: “the crotch doc.” If a girl had an ankle injury, he found it necessary to touch her there. A swollen wrist? Same thing. A painful knee? You know. Somehow, he seemed more interested in the crotch than the ankle, wrist, knee or any other part of the body.

The first accusation against Nassar dates to 1992 when he was still a grad student. That gave him 24 years to have abused young female athletes. I suspect that more than 156 suffered at his hands. The shame and bewilderment were such that some just could not bear to go public.

Rachael Denhollander, Jamie Dantzscher, Clasina Syrovy, Emma Ann Miller, sisters Maddie and Kara Johnson, Lindsey Lemke, Kaylee Lorincz, Alexis Alvarado, Christine Harrison, Jordyn Wieber, McKayla Maroney, Larissa Boyce, Mattie Larson, Melody Posthuma-VanderVeen, Jessica Howard, Maggie Nichols, Tiffany Thomas-Lopez, Megan Halicek, Bailey Lorencen, Nicole Reeb, Jessica Thomashow, Christie Achenbach, Simone Biles, Gabby Douglas, Jeanette Antolin, Kyle Stephens, Jennifer Rood-Bedford, Gwen Anderson and Aly Raisman are just a few of the young women (one victim was six years old when her abuse began!) who came forward with allegations of what Nassar had done while purportedly treating them. People in the Michigan State athletic department and all the way up to the Board of Trustees and the president’s office suspected or flat-out knew that there was a rogue doctor on their campus. But they appear to have deemed it not important enough to merit a serious investigation. (The school’s Title IX office did not begin investigating Nassar until 2014, and it essentially cleared him.) The recent horrors of Jerry Sandusky at Penn State evidently did not register because MSU turned a blind eye again and again.  A recent Detroit News report concluded that 14 people at Michigan State were notified about Nassar’s bogus treatments and either did nothing or actively covered for him.

Justice began to be served in 2015 when USA Gymnastics quietly dismissed him. The next year, the Indianapolis Star (USA Gymnastics is based in Indy) did an exposé which led to many more victims coming forward with their stories. Michigan State canned him in September 2016, and he was put under arrest two months later. His medical license was revoked in April 2017.

Tears and rage at their former abuser

Nassar’s long-delayed reckoning had come. It started with him pleading guilty to possession of 37,000 images and videos of child pornography, for which he was sentenced to three 20-year terms. Soon he copped to several counts of criminal sexual misconduct, obviating a trial. Nonetheless, in January 2018 we had the spectacle of him in a dingy blue prison jumpsuit in Judge Rosemarie Aquilina’s courtroom in Ingham County, Michigan. It was a sentencing hearing. Aquilina made him sit and listen to an almost endless procession of young women who made searing victim-impact statements. Many wept, and all conveyed fury and disdain for the disgraced ex-doctor. Aquilina may have gone overboard in showing sympathy for the victims. I am no legal expert, but I think she left herself open to accusations of judicial misconduct. The lady gave too many long-winded speeches that served no purpose other than to praise victims, excoriate Nassar and draw attention to herself. It was unbecoming of a black-robed judge.

I watched and read about this story with equal parts fascination and horror. For one thing, the photos of Nassar from his glory days to now show him devolve from a beaming, well-fed professional to a shrunken, pathetic prisoner. I actually had a degree of sympathy for him until I read his letter to the judge and heard him speak in the courtroom. In reference to his first conviction, he dismissed it as mere possession of pornography. That is no crime, friends, but he was looking at kiddie porn—a very different matter. He also rather pathetically asserted that Michigan’s attorney general had manipulated him into pleading guilty. In the face of massive evidence to the contrary, he stuck to the claim that his so-called treatments were medically sound. Before disappearing forever (he was sentenced to 40 to 175 years in prison, set to run upon completion of those first 60 years) into the federal prison system, he made the weakest of apologies about “what had occurred.” At such a late hour, Nassar would not take ownership of his deeds. One of his victims urged him to come clean and specify who knew what and when at MSU and USA Gymnastics. Nassar refused.

His wife divorced him in the summer of 2017. I would not be surprised if his children, Katelyn, Caroline and Ryan, change their last name. Like Sandusky in Pennsylvania, Nassar is detested and reviled, a man bereft of friends.

Plenty of blame to spread around

USA Gymnastics, which had lost several major sponsors, cut ties with the notorious Karolyi Ranch (which closed the day after Nassar’s sentencing but remains under investigation by the Walker County [Texas] Sheriff’s Office). Threatened with decertification by the US Olympic Committee, USAG’s entire board resigned. (CEO Steve Penny quit in March 2017, but not before getting a $1 million “golden parachute.”) The USOC—not without its own critics—is also launching an independent investigation of the scandal.

And what of MSU, the school that granted Nassar a medical degree, employed him and made so little effort to stop him? For two decades, people there ignored what Joel Ferguson, a member of the Board of Trustees, called “this Nassar thing” and waited for it to blow over. Women’s gymnastics coach Kathie Klages, among his chief enablers, is long gone. Tone-deaf president Lou Anna Simon has stepped down, as has athletic director Marc Hollis. Pressure is building on the Board of Trustees, all of them, to hit the road. Spartans men’s basketball coach Tom Izzo made some flippant remarks about the Nassar case, and it is possible that he—with his $4 million salary—will go too. Football coach Mark Dantonio may be on shaky ground; numerous MSU basketball and football players have been accused of sexual assault in the last 10 years. Some of the Spartans’ student-athletes are said to have been involved in gang rapes. Investigations of those allegations were tepid at best.

The NCAA, which issued stiff penalties for Penn State in the aftermath of the Sandusky affair, may do so again here. Civil lawsuits have already been filed, although the university, which circled the wagons a long time ago, is probably formulating plans for a negotiated settlement thereof. The last thing the people in East Lansing—“Spartan Nation,” they like to call themselves—want is to have those cases go to trial. Damaging information might come out in pre-trial discovery. More heads would roll, and more money would justifiably be paid to Larry Nassar’s victims.