Former U.S. team doctor Larry Nassar is sentenced to 40 to 175 years in prison.
Nassar given up to 175 years in sexual abuse scandal; Mich. State president resigns
As a Michigan judge ensured Wednesday that former USA Gymnastics team doctor Larry Nassar will spend the rest of his life behind bars, the focus of the worst sexual abuse scandal in the history of American sports turned to a barrage of investigations, including one in Texas, into who knew of Nassar’s conduct and what they did or did not do to stop him.
Nassar, 54, who molested young women and girls as young as 6 under the guise of medical treatment over two decades, was sentenced to 40 to 175 years in prison.
In Lansing, Mich., Circuit Judge Rosemarie Aquilina, who presided over a seven-day hearing in which Nassar was confronted by more than 150 survivors of his crimes, including Olympic gold medalists Aly Raisman and Jordyn Wieber, said, “I just signed your death warrant.”
Patient and nurturing toward Nassar’s victims, Aquilina saved her anger for the defendant. Before imposing sentence, she read a letter to the court from Nassar in which he said his accusers were seeking attention and money, proclaiming, “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.”
She then held up the letter before Nassar and let it drop from between her fingers.
“It is my honor and privilege to sentence you, because, sir, you do not
“I just signed your death warrant.”
Judge Rosemarie Aquilina
deserve to walk outside of a prison ever again,” the judge said. “… Anywhere you walk, destruction will occur to those most vulnerable. … I find that you don’t get it. That you’re a danger. You remain a danger.”
Nassar, who had pleaded guilty to seven counts of criminal sexual conduct, faced a minimum 25 to 40 years on the Michigan charges. He previously pleaded guilty to a federal charge involving possession of child pornography and was sentenced to 60 years.
Aquilina acknowledged that her decision to send Nassar to prison for the rest of his life should not be the last word on the scandal that has called into question the future of the sport whose athletes he abused.
“There has to be a massive investigation as to why there was inaction, why there was silence. Justice requires more than what I can do on this bench,” Aquilina said.
Investigation in Texas
The U.S. Olympic Committee announced plans for an independent probe in which it said it expects USA Gymnastics, which employed Nassar from the mid1990s until 2015, to cooperate.
Legislators in Michigan adopted a resolution calling on Lou Anna Simon, the president of Michigan State University — which also employed Nassar — to resign or be fired. Simon published a letter of resignation on the university’s website Wednesday night.
In Texas, Walker County officials have announced plans for a local investigation into actions at the Karolyi Ranch, the former women’s national training center for USA Gymnastics located in the Sam Houston National Forest near New Waverly. Sheriff ’s officials have not disclosed the focus of their investigation or detailed how it will proceed.
Houston attorney and former federal prosecutor Philip Hilder said the local probe likely will attempt to gather details of crimes that Nassar committed at the ranch and try to determine whether he was allowed to do so by the ranch’s owners, Bela and Martha Karolyi, and other USA Gymnastics national team staff members or coaches.
“If criminal activity occurred on the property, there needs to be a thorough vetting as to how much oversight was exercised,” Hilder said. “Were they present, or were they mere landlords?”
“If individuals were aware that felonies occurred and had the duty to come forward and did not, there is criminal exposure,” Hilder added. “So it is incumbent on the local authorities to determine whether other individuals were aware or complicit or involved.”
Given the length of the sentence imposed on Nassar in Michigan, Hilder said, attempting to charge Nassar crimes in Texas would be a waste of time and manpower.
Citing the pertinent issues for local investigators, he said, “The victims said they reached out and reported abuse. Who did they report to, what did they report, how did they report it, and what, if anything, was done?”
Suit alleges ‘willful blindness’
The Karolyis are among defendants in a civil suit filed in California that accuses them of creating a “toxic environment where (Nassar) was given opportunity to perpetrate and continue his systematic sexual abuse of minor children.”
The suit, filed by a former member of the U.S. gymnastics team as “Jane Doe,” claims the Karolyis “turned a blind eye to (Nassar’s) sexual abuse of children” in return for Nassar’s “silence and willful blindness to their regime of fear, intimidation and physical and emotional abuse of minor child gymnasts.”
Civil action in Texas also is a possibility if crimes were committed at the ranch, which housed women’s national team training camps from 2001 until 2017. USA Gymnastics announced last week it has ended its lease to use the ranch as a training center.
Houston attorney Andrew Golub said Texas law stipulates a two-year statute of limitations in which to file a civil suit. If the victim was a minor at the time of the assault, he or she has two years after reaching adulthood in which to file suit.
In Colorado Springs, Colo., the USOC said it will commission an independent investigation “to examine how an abuse of this proportion could have gone undetected for so long.”
“We need to know when complaints were brought forward and to who,” Scott Blackmun, the USOC’s CEO, said in a letter addressed to U.S. Olympic athletes.
Blackmun in his letter apologized to Nassar’s victims, adding, “We are sorry for the pain caused by this terrible man, and sorry that you weren’t afforded a safe opportunity to pursue your sports dreams. The Olympic family is among those who failed you.”
Calls for more resignations
Blackmun said the USOC “strongly considered decertifying” USA Gymnastics as the sport’s national governing body but elected not to do so because it did not wish to harm clubs and athletes who had no part in Nassar’s crimes.
“But we will pursue decertification if USA Gymnastics does not fully embrace the necessary changes in their governance structure,” Blackmun wrote.
Those changes, he said, include the resignation of all remaining USA Gymnastics board members. Board chairman Paul Parilla and the board’s vice chairman and treasurer resigned this week.
Dominique Moceanu, a 1996 gold medalist who has been a longtime critic of the Karolyis and of Martha Karolyi’s 15-year tenure as women’s national team coordinator, said in an interview with CNN that more action was needed.
“The time has come for the house of cards to fall on every abuser in our sport,” Moceanu said, “We need to get rid of them.”
Four-time Olympic gold medalist Simone Biles, who last week said that she had been among Nassar’s victims, said in a Twitter message Wednesday: “To Judge Aquilina: THANK YOU, YOU ARE MY HERO.”
Biles, who lives and trains in Spring, added, “Shout out to all of the survivors for being so brave & speaking like the queens that you are while looking at that monster. He will no longer have the power to steal our happiness or joy. I stand with every one of you.”
Raisman in a Twitter message Wednesday night thanked the judge and supporters and renewed her call for an independent investigation “to find out how exactly this disaster happened. … Today was an important victory, but there is still work to be done.”