Several top officials quit amid scandal
The organization that governs gymnastics in the United States said its chairman and several board members have resigned under intense pressure resulting from a molestation case involving a team doctor.
The announcement was made Monday as dozens more young women and girls gave victim-impact statements in a Michigan courtroom.
USA Gymnastics’ handling of the sexual-abuse scandal involving longtime national team doctor Larry Nassar has been widely derided — including sharp criticism by many of the gymnasts last week and this week at Nassar’s sentencing in court in Ingham County, Mich.
The officials who resigned Monday included the chairman of the board, Paul Parilla; the vice chairman, Jay Binder; and the board’s treasurer, Bitsy Kelley.
“We support their decisions to resign at this time,” the gymnastics federation’s president, Kerry Perry, said in a statement. “We believe this step will allow us to more effectively move forward in implementing change within our organization.”
Later Monday, USA Gymnastics suspended the coach of the 2012 Olympic team, John Geddert, who worked with Nassar at his gyms in Michigan.
The U.S. Olympic Committee, which also has been criticized for its inaction in the Nassar case, praised the resignations. Scott Blackmun, the Olympic committee’s chief executive, said in a statement that his organization had been discussing board changes with USA Gymnastics since October. He said those talks escalated over the weekend, after days of victimimpact statements by former gymnasts in Michigan, and culminated in the decision by the three board members to give up their roles.
“New board leadership is necessary because the current leaders have been focused on establishing that they did nothing wrong,” Blackmun said in his statement. “The Olympic family failed these athletes, and we must continue to take every step necessary to ensure this never happens again.”
Mark Jones, a spokesman for the USOC, said top Olympic committee officials met with Parilla on Jan. 11 to ask him to resign.
The Olympic committee has decertified other federations in the past for mismanagement, stripping them of their authority as the national governing bodies.
The announcement came on the fifth day of women and girls providing their victim-impact statements to a judge in a Michigan courtroom, where Nassar is being sentenced on multiple counts of sexual assault. More than 140 women and teenagers are expected to speak.
Many of those survivors who spoke have accused USA Gymnastics of turning a blind eye to the abuse, which occurred in Nassar’s home, at Michigan gyms, at Michigan State University where he was an osteopathic sports doctor and at the U.S. women’s gymnastics’ team’s national training center run by Martha and Bela Karolyi.
The gymnastics organization severed ties with the training center, which was held at a remote Texas ranch, last week.
Jessica Howard, a former U.S. national champion in rhythmic gymnastics who served on the board from about 2009 through 2012, said the resignation of those top board members was a long time coming.
“Paul Parilla has been the architect of the USA Gymnastics board for as long as I can remember and is one of the people responsible for the broken culture in our sport,” said Howard, who was a teenager when Nassar abused her. “I truly believe that no one on the board thinks they are responsible for anything that Larry Nassar did to those girls, and that’s just sick.”
Parilla is a lawyer and a retired Marine colonel. His daughter, Jennifer, was a twotime Olympian in trampoline.
An investigative review led by former federal prosecutor Deborah J. Daniels last year found that the board did not adequately address sexualabuse issues in the sport, and Howard personally found that to be true.
On Sunday, she could recall only one time the board spoke about an abuse case, and it was quickly dismissed as a mere legal matter.
“I remember feeling like I was gut-punched,” she said.
The judge overseeing the sentencing of Nassar said Monday that more than 100 girls and women who had given statements at the five-day hearing were “sister survivor warriors.”
Nassar already has been sentenced to 60 years in prison for child pornography crimes. Under a plea deal, he faces a minimum prison sentence of 25 years in the molestation case. The maximum term could be much higher.
“Larry, how many of us are there? Do you even know?” asked Clasina Syrboby, as she fought back tears while speaking for more than 20 minutes Monday. “You preyed on me, on us. You saw a way to take advantage of your position: the almighty and trusted gymnastics doctor. Shame on you, Larry. Shame on you.”