Finally, there is justice for the abused
Day after day, one after another, they came before the court, these athletes with their stories, a procession of pain and courage that left the courtroom in tears and applause, until it was time for the final woman to face her abuser.
“I am so honored to let you know the next person you will hear from is Rachael Denhollander,” her attorney told Judge Rosemarie Aquilina on Wednesday morning in Ingham County (Mich.) Circuit Court.
Denhollander was the 168th woman to give a statement to the court, some reports said. Or maybe the 156th, as others did. That’s the staggering part. That number. It was too large to keep accurate track. It kept rising even in the final days.
Women kept coming forward right to the end with horrific stories that alternately extinguished all hope for humanity for how they were abused by U.S. gymnastics team trainer Larry Nassar and lit it anew with their show of strength.
“I do want to thank you, Judge Aquilina, for giving us our voices,” Denhollander began. “Our voices were taken from us for so long.”
She was last, you see, but she was the first, too. The first abused girl to use her adult voice. The first to go public with charges against Nassar. Or maybe she was just the first to be loud enough to be heard? The first to know how to fight back?
When Denhollander started there was no army of women, no “sister survivors,” as the judge kept calling them. There was just a scared young girl who grew into a strong mother of three for whom the pain never subsided. She faced off against the powerful institutions where Nassar worked: The U.S. Olympic Committee, the U.S. Gymnastics Team and Michigan State University.
All she had was the truth and the same question she asked in court.
“How much is a little girl worth?” Denhollander, 31, said. “How much is a young woman worth? Larry is a hardened and determined sexual predator. I know this first-hand.
“At age 15, when I had chronic back pain, Larry sexually assaulted me repeatedly under the guise of medical treatment for more than a year.”
Multiply that story by 156 or 168. Expand it exponentially to include guilt-ridden parents and friends. That just starts to measure the damage of so much evil.
Amy Labadie said her vagina was sore in competition from Nassar’s abuse — “How disgusting is that to even say out loud?” she said.
Arianna Guerrero, 16, glared at Nassar and said, “You seem to have a hard time looking at me now, but you didn’t when I was lying half-naked on your table.”
“The survivors are here, standing tall, and we’re not going anywhere,” Olympic gold medalist Aly Raisman, 23, said.
How did this happen? How could all these girls be abused on a national team and at a large, state school for nearly two decades? The reason came in plain view after Denhollander first aired her charges to The Indianapolis Star in 2016.
She felt the backlash of these powerful institutions. She was in it for the money, they said. She didn’t know the nuance of medical treatment and abuse, they said. “Good luck — we’re with you,” a Michigan State official wrote in passing evidence to Nassar.
Even as the trial was winding down, as it was clear Nassar would never be free again, Michigan State board of trustees vice-chairman Joel Ferguson told a Lansing radio station Tuesday how school officials didn’t spend much time discussing “the Nassar thing.” One guess: They will now.
Four girls brought Nassar’s abuse to three different athletic departments at Michigan State, “years before I walked into Larry’s room,” Denhollander said she discovered later. Others did the same to the U.S. national team. All were intimidated into silence.
“The reason everyone who heard about Larry’s abuse did not believe it is because they did not listen,” Denhollander said. “They did not listen in 1997 or 1998 or 1999 or 2000 or 2004 or 2014. No one knew, according to your definition of ‘know,’ because no one handled the reports of abuse properly.
“This, what it took to get here, what we had to go through for our voices to be heard because of the responses of the adults and authorities, has greatly compounded the damage we suffer. And it matters.”
It mattered, too, that Nassar, 54, was sentenced from 40 to 175 years in prison. “I just signed your death warrant,” Aquilina said.
It also mattered, the judge said, what everyone watching thought. What anyone human felt. She looked at Denhollander, the first and last of these women to talk, and said, “You are the bravest person I’ve ever had in my courtroom.”