Gymnast doc’s boss held on sex charges

Authorities: Michigan State med school dean didn’t stop Nassar, had nude student pics.

EASTLANSING, MICH.— Asexual-abuse scandal at Michigan State University widened Tuesday as authorities charged a medical school offifficial with failing to keep former sports doctor Larry Nassar in line and accused him of groping female students and storing nude student selfies on his campus computer.

William Strampel, 70, is the fifirst person charged since a broad investigation was launched in January into how Michigan State handled complaints against Nassar, who for years sexually abused girls and young women, especially gymnasts.

Strampel was dean of the College of Osteopathic Medicine until December. He was Nassar’s boss, yet he failed to enforce restrictions on him after a female patient in 2014 complained about sexual contact, authorities alleged. Strampel spent Monday night in jail ahead of an arraignment Tuesday afternoon. His attorney, John Dakmak, declined to comment.

The complaint, which alleges Strampel solicited nude photos fromat leastone female medical student, said he used his offiffice to “harass, discriminate, demean, sexually proposition, and sexually assault female students in violation of his statutory duty as a public offifficer.”

His computer contained approximately 50 photos of female genitalia, nude and semi-nude women, sex toys and pornography. “Many of these photos are ofwhat appear to be ‘selfifies’ of female MSU students, as evidence by the MSU clothing and piercings featured in multiple photos,” according to the complaint.

He is also accused of grabbing students’ buttocks at the college’s annual ball and a scholarship dinner. The maximum penalty for the charges ranges from one year in jail to fifive years in prison.

Nassar, 54, pleaded guilty to molesting patients and possessing child pornography andis expected to spend the rest of his life in prison. Strampel is accused of letting Nassar continue to treat patients unchecked by protocols that were supposedly put in place — thus allowing Nassar to “commit a host of sexual assaults against new victims until, following news reports of additional allegations against Nassar, MSU fifinally terminated his employment over two years later,” the complaint says.

Strampel announced his leave of absence as college dean — for medical reasons — in December.

Strampel told police last year that he never followed up after ordering Nassar in 2014 to have a third person present when providing treatment to “anything close to a sensitive area,” andthat any skin-to-skin contact should be minimal and explained in detail.

Nassar was fifired in 2016 for violating that rule. His dismissal came less than a month after former gymnast Rachael Denhollander fifiled a criminal complaint saying Nassar had sexually assaulted her with his hands while treating her for back pain years earlier.

Strampel told a campus detective and FBI agent in 2017 that he did not check to see if Nassar was following the guidance because Nassar had been “exonerated” in an investigation of a patient’s complaint.