USOC head Blackmun steps down in wake of Nassar case
Scott Blackmun is stepping down as chief executive of the U.S. Olympic Committee, the latest official to fall under pressure from the Larry Nassar sex-abuse scandal.
Blackmun was highly regarded and viewed as a stabilizing force in an organization previously troubled by chaotic leadership. But criticism of the USOC’s handling of the abuse scandal involving the national team doctor for gymnastics had led at least two U.S. senators and a group of about 30 former Olympians, athletes’ representatives and child-advocacy experts to call for Blackmun to step down.
Blackmun became chief executive in 2010 and in January disclosed that he had prostate cancer, a diagnosis that kept him from attending the recent Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea.
The senators called for Blackmun to step down after a report in The Wall Street Journal that the USOC did not intervene despite learning in 2015 from USA Gymnastics that gymnasts were victims of possible sexual misconduct by Nassar, a year before accusations became public.
The USOC has said it followed proper procedures and was told that authorities were being contacted. But The New York Times has reported that as an FBI investigation plodded along between July 2015 and September 2016, at least 40 more girls and women say Nassar molested them during that period.
In January, Blackmun had called for the resignations of the entire board of USA Gymnastics in the wake of the Nassar scandal, and within days the members complied. The head of USA Gymnastics had resigned last March.
Nassar was convicted on charges that he sexually abused hundreds of young gymnasts and other athletes for years while they were under his care, either at training camps held by United States gymnastics teams, at private gyms or through his job at Michigan State. He was sentenced to 40 to 175 years in prison for multiple sex crimes.
USA Gymnastics, which sets the sport’s rules and policies and selects the U.S. teams for the Olympics, has been widely derided for its handling of the sexual abuse scandal.