Raisman, gymnastics victims discuss sentence, abuse
“It’s not something where you feel instantly better. We need to hold these organizations accountable.”
Olympic gold medalist Aly Raisman
In the wake of former USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar’s sentence of 40 to 175 years in prison, which was preceded by 156 victim-impact statements over seven days, several of Nassar’s victims shared their feelings about the sentence on Thursday morning television shows.
Olympic gold medalist Aly Raisman, who last week read a blistering statement to Nassar, appeared on TODAY.
She said she operated with tunnel vision — similar to her gymnastics meets — before delivering her statement. Raisman said Nassar “looked at me the whole entire time. It was crazy.”
But Raisman struggled to believe justice was fully served.
“It’s not something where you feel instantly better,” she said. “We need to hold these organizations accountable — USA Gymnastics, the USOC, Michigan State — this is bigger than Larry Nassar. We have to get to the bottom of how this disaster happened.”
Former gymnast Rachael Denhollan- der, the first to publicly accuse Nassar of sexual abuse, shared her reaction on Megyn Kelly TODAY. “I cried,” she said. “To be able to put the shame and blame back where it belongs — on the abuser — is an incredibly powerful thing to witness.
“It was also devastating to witness.”
She also called out USA Gymnastics. “If you have to pay a private investigator to come in and tell you you need to report the sexual assault of a child, you have no business being on that board.”
Kyle Stephens, the first woman to read a statement in the sentencing, discussed how Nassar played a role in her father’s eventual suicide.
Nassar “started abusing me when I was 6,” Stephens said.
In the same segment on Megyn
TODAY, former gymnast Mattie Larson described how she once hurt herself — what she considered a “victory” — so she didn’t have to face Nassar for medical treatment.
She described herself as “a shell of a child” with “no way out.
“He made me almost give up hope,” she said.