The sacrifice
She surrendered her secrets to put away a sexual predator. Then there was more to do
Rachael Denhollander always wanted to keep it a secret.
The journal she tucked away in a hidden folder contained her most private thoughts, anguished conversations with herself detailing what her doctor, Larry Nassar, had done to her on his exam table.
The moments he penetrated her with his ungloved fingers, his hand hidden under a towel, while making small talk with her mother, just a few feet away.
“Am I hurting you, Rach?” he whispered close to her ear.
Beginning in 2004, Denhollander’s cursive handwriting on each page de
tailed her vulnerability and her doubts that God cared.
“Save me O’ God,” she wrote on the first line of the first page.
No one was ever supposed to see that journal — certainly not the man who so horrifically violated her.
Nassar, a renowned sports medicine doctor, had stolen so much — her innocence, her trust, her relationship with her own body. It was the very same thing, the world would later learn, that he’d done to more than 300 other women and girls.
What Nassar couldn’t have were Denhollander’s deepest thoughts. For 12 years, she locked them away in 31 looseleaf pages, until the moment she knew they could stop him.
So, Denhollander made a sacrifice. This deeply private woman – a mother of four, a lawyer and devoted wife to Jacob Denhollander – made the choice to turn over her most tender thoughts to police, hoping the evidence could stop her abuser.
In August 2016, Rachael Denhollander, now 34, became the first woman to publicly say that Nassar, a former Michigan State University and USA Gymnastics doctor, sexually abused her. Her account sparked one of the largest sexual assault cases in U.S. history.
Her presence and sacrifice helped drive the stake that banished Nassar to prison for the rest of his life.
But that came at a price: It forever tied her name to his. And it gave him what she never wanted him to have.
“The worst part of testifying was having to talk about the impact because that’s what Larry always wanted to know. And that was the one thing I always kept from him, and I couldn’t this time,” she said.
None of this is what Denhollander wanted.
Given the choice, she’d gladly slip back into anonymity at home in Louisville. But she’s steadfast in her call to do what’s right, no matter the cost.
For Denhollander, what’s right is to travel the country to speak out for abused women and girls and to challenge churches, universities and sports programs to do the right thing when abuse is exposed.
She doesn’t believe God purposely put her in harm’s way, nor any of the hundreds of other girls Nassar assaulted.
“Evil exists that has a different origin,” she said. “It’s going to be there. It’s better to be able to do something about it than not be able to do anything.
“So, in a sense, yes, I wish it wasn’t me. I’m also very glad it didn’t have to be anybody else.”
A voice for justice
Wearing a clearance-rack dress and her signature self-described Disney princess ponytail over her shoulder, Denhollander sat on a downtown Birmingham, Alabama, stage on a summer night in June with five pastors and advocates.
More than a thousand Southern Baptists filled the convention center hall for a conversation about a sexual abuse scandal that was enveloping the denomination.
Most only learned about Denhollander 17 months earlier, at the end of Nassar’s criminal cases, when the world was captivated by her story and the accounts of 155 other women he had assaulted.
Denhollander didn’t hesitate to condemn Southern Baptist pastors for failing to protect sexual assault victims from predators within the church.
“I think it is very telling that I have heard hundreds, literally hundreds, of sermons directed on the quiet and submissive sphere that a woman should have. I have heard not one on how to value a woman’s voice. I have heard not one on the issue of sexual assault . ...
“As soon as an issue comes along that needs to be fought for, all that masculinity disappears. And the women are left on the front line with you telling them, ‘Be quiet, submissive, fight your battles.’
“Do it. Better. Brothers.”
The applause started before Denhollander had finished. A line, mostly of women, formed to meet her before she walked off stage.
Madeline, an abuse survivor whom the Courier Journal is identifying by her first name only, cried as she spoke to Denhollander. Denhollander held her.
“She doesn’t know me, and she probably doesn’t know that there are hundreds, thousands of women just watching going, ‘OK, if she can do it, I can do it,’ ” Madeline said afterward, describing Denhollander as a modern-day Martin
Luther King Jr. “But that is what I have said to myself, ‘She can do this. I can do this.’ ”
The next morning, Denhollander walked through the Birmingham airport; the flight back to Louisville, connecting through Atlanta, was boarding.
This is her life now, the one she chose over the one she truly wants – to be at home with her husband and children.
The moment that changed her life
In 1996, 12-year-old Denhollander and her family gathered around the TV to watch the U.S. women’s Olympic team win a gold medal in Atlanta. Denhollander’s gymnastics career started soon after.
Denhollander wasn’t a star, but the acrobatics and maneuvers made her feel like she was flying.
Still, the practices took a toll. She injured her back so severely when she was 15 that she would wake up with a numb leg. But she wanted back on the mat. She wanted to fly again.
So in early 2000, Denhollander and her mother drove 70 miles from Kalamazoo to East Lansing to see Nassar. The abuse began during the first appointment.
She would lie on the table feeling humiliated and degraded as Nassar penetrated her vagina with his fingers for as long as 40 minutes.
“The best I could figure was it had to be legitimate,” Denhollander said, looking back. “He couldn’t be the national team physician, he couldn’t be teaching osteopathic medicine, he couldn’t be this revered physician if he wasn’t doing legitimate medicine.”
But she’d lie in bed at night, her hands balled into fists and her fingernails digging into her palms, the pain giving her mind somewhere to focus.
On one of the final appointments, Nassar massaged Denhollander’s breast and she froze. He stopped scheduling her for appointments in late 2001.
Denhollander continued to have nightmares about hands and about the abuse. Her mom noticed and pushed for details. Denhollander told her Nassar molested her.
Her mother asked: Do you want to go to the police? But Rachael doubted anyone would believe her.
“Silence seemed safer,” she said. Years passed, but the trauma refused to fade, so on May 5, 2004, Denhollander began to write about what she was feeling.
Page by page Denhollander filled up her folder, writing on one page: “How do you explain to someone the confusion, sick feeling, and shame without knowing why?”
Still, she forged ahead with her life, passing the bar by 25. In 2006, she met Jacob Denhollander in the comments sections of a satire blog. They traded emails for a year before he flew to Kalamazoo so they could finally meet face to face.
“He had really nice eyes,” she recalled.
They married in 2009 and in 2012 moved to Louisville, where her husband started at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.
By 2016, they had three children younger than age 5.
On an August morning in 2016, Rachael Denhollander opened her computer and saw an Indianapolis Star article trending on Facebook: USA Gymnastics had covered up sexual abuse complaints against coaches for decades.
She read the story over and over, knowing that another abuser remained unmasked: Larry Nassar.
She opened up her email and told the Star the name of her abuser: “I recently read the article titled ‘Out of Balance’ published by the IndyStar. My experience may not be relevant to your investigation, but I am emailing to report an incident . ... ”
“I have seen little hope that any light would be shed by coming forward, so I have remained quiet. If there is a possibility that is changing, I will come forward as publicly as necessary.”
Surrendering her secrets
In late August 2016, Denhollander told two journalists from The Indianapolis Star what she had kept to herself for half her life.
Starting when she was 15, she told the reporters, Nassar sexually assaulted her. Her mother was there for all of it, even though she didn’t know what was happening. That’s why Denhollander didn’t stop it.
Days later, Rachael and Jacob Denhollander drove to the Michigan State University Police Department. The detective wanted to know everything.
From the moment she decided to come forward, Rachael Denhollander knew she’d have to surrender her deepest thoughts. She dug her journal out of storage and mailed it to police.
Her secrets were no longer hers. Nine months after going to police, Denhollander sat 10 feet away from Nassar in a Michigan courtroom for his preliminary hearing and described every horrid detail of her abuse.
“At the point that I relinquished my privacy, there was a train that just wasn’t going to stop. And I knew that,” she said.
She kept talking to reporters, which triggered more nightmares but brought more women and girls forward, strengthening the case.
As 2017 neared an end, Nassar’s attorneys reached out to state prosecutors looking for a plea deal. If Nassar wanted to avoid a trial, the prosecutor had conditions: Every victim must be given the chance to speak during his sentencing.
So starting on the morning of Jan. 16, 2018, Denhollander sat in courtrooms over three weeks and listened as 203 women and girls voiced their trauma and pain.
She wanted to hear every word.
Embracing role as advocate
On Feb. 5, 2018, Nassar walked out through a corner of the courtroom wearing an orange jail jumpsuit and looked down as he disappeared through the doorway on his way to prison.
Denhollander stood inside, surrounded by reporters and cameras.
“We have taken care of one perpetrator,” she told reporters. “We have not taken care of the systems that allowed him to flourish for 20 years.”
In that moment, Denhollander fully embraced her role as an advocate for women and girls who had been sexually abused.
“What do you do when you have something that’s important to do,” she said later, “and you can do it very well, and you don’t want to do it?”
She wrapped herself in a pink blanket late at night and started writing her memoir – “What Is a Girl Worth?” And then a children’s book with a similar name – “How Much Is a Little Girl Worth?”
She continued the interviews, pushing for reforms at Michigan State University and USA Gymnastics. She crisscrossed the country, meeting with victims and lawmakers, pushing for new laws in such places as Michigan and Vermont.
She spoke out about sexual abuse scandals involving a doctor at the University of Southern California, within the Catholic Church and in the Southern Baptist community.
Not everyone was receptive to her message.
“Everybody has that instinctive community response. And the real test for how much we understand the dynamics of abuse, and how committed we are, is what we do when it’s in our own community,” she said. “What do we do when it will cost?”
Denhollander knows #MeToo and #ChurchToo hashtags alone won’t get victims into a prosecutor’s office, a courtroom or a therapy appointment. That’s why she steps to the podium, meets with victims and grants interviews when she’d rather be home reading to her children.
Where Denhollander is truly happy
Denhollander stood at a lectern in a sunshine-flooded dining room at the Teton Pines Resort and Country Club on a clear Wyoming morning in late June and told her story once again.
“Not facing the reality of what I had lost and the damage that was done seemed less painful,” she said to the group gathered at a fundraiser for sexual assault and domestic violence victims. “But in reality, it kept me from the truth, and it kept me from healing.”
Unlike most trips where Denhollander tries to minimize time away from the kids, this one included a family vacation.
During their time in Wyoming, Denhollander hoped to re-create a vacation she went on with her family when she was 12, when her father read “The Hobbit” aloud while nature surrounded them all.
As the midday sun warmed them, Denhollander, her husband and their children hiked the Teton mountain range on a twisting path, each turn getting them closer to Inspiration Point.
There, Denhollander looked out over the mountains.
“I think they’re just an incredible combination of strength and beauty both,” she said. “They’ve planted themselves and they are going to stay. They’re not moving, not for anybody.”
Soon they would start the hike back down, a family vacation coming to an end, with Denhollander’s other life waiting to pull her away.
But up here on this mountain, Denhollander brushed the hair from daughter Elora’s sleeping face, leaned down and kissed her head.
In this moment, Denhollander is where she wanted to be.