VICTIMS GET TO HAVE FULL SAY AGAINST PREDATOR DOCTOR
and for the role that institutions like USA Gymnastics and Michigan State University played in employing him for decades.
Yet Aquilina’s vow to let every victim speak also unexpectedly turned the hearing into a cathartic forum that emboldened dozens of women who had remained silent to come forward with accounts of abuse by Nassar. Court officials initially had expected 88 young women to speak when the hearing began last week but the number mushroomed to 156 by Wednesday when Aquilina sentenced Nassar to 40 to 175 years in prison.
Tuesday’s hearing began with a statement from Whitney Burns, the 125th speaker, who said that she had initially not planned to come but changed her mind because “hearing the voices of my peers has given me the strength to tell my story.”
In response, Aquilina, who has written crime novels and served 20 years in the Michigan Army National Guard, has offered encouragement, consolation and tissues. She had made no secret that she wanted Nassar to spend the rest of his life in prison. “I just signed your death warrant,” Aquilina said in prounouncing Nassar’s sentence.
And, in an extraordinary session streamed live on the internet over several days, she has opened her courtroom to any victim who wishes to speak, for however long she wishes to speak. That goes for their coaches and parents, too.
“Leave your pain here,” Aquilina told one young woman, “and go out and do your magnificent things.”
Stephen Gillers, a professor of law at New York University, said that although judges were often thought of as unbiased and impartial, it was important to remember that this was a sentencing hearing, not a trial. Nassar, who has already received a 60-year federal sentence for a child pornography conviction, pleaded guilty to several state sexual assault charges.
“At a sentencing, a judge can say and is encouraged to say just what she thinks,” Gillers said in an interview. “What’s unusual here is that the number of victims who are willing to speak has given the judge more than 100 opportunities to do that.”
Sure enough, Aquilina punctuated each and every victim statement with some words of her own — a mix of praise, gratitude and support for the women who have come forward to address the court and, in many instances, Nassar himself, who has been a captive to it all from the witness box. Occasionally he has teared up but mostly he sits passively, staring down at papers in front of him.
Aquilina’s unconventional approach had not elicited any discernible criticism, but she has generated attention.
Not only has she opened the floodgates to emotional testimony in a very pronounced way, but she seems determined to lend her voice, shedding any pretense of judicial distance.
Several victims — and their parents — thanked Aquilina, including Doug Powell, whose daughter Kassie spoke out last week as one of Nassar’s accusers.
“Judge Aquilina, I applaud you,” Powell said after his daughter addressed the court. “We applaud you. This room applauds you.”
The use of victim impact statements has generated debate in sentencing hearings before juries, as some scholars have questioned the tactic as an obvious emotional ploy meant to sway the panel for a tougher term.
But in this case, there is no jury and, between the federal sentence and the pending state one, the judge had previously indicated that Nassar, 54, probably would die in prison.
And so she turned it into a rolling demand for accountability by the people who were supposed to protect the victims.
“Permitting the victim impact statements of all individuals who Nassar abused is the government’s opportunity to counter Nassar’s message: to demonstrate to the victims that they matter, that their lives matter, that the state stands ready to impose the punishment that Nassar deserves,” said Janice Nadler, a law professor at Northwestern University who has written about victim impact statements.