What the Larry Nassar Trial Says About Sexual Assault in Athletic Communities

Nas­sar, who also worked as a doc­tor for the Michi­gan State Uni­ver­si­ty ath­let­ic teams, molest­ed girls as young as six years old and claimed he was per­form­ing “spe­cial treat­ment” on them. He used his author­i­ty to manip­u­late and coerce his vic­tims into sub­mis­sion and silence. “Lar­ry metic­u­lous­ly groomed me for the pur­pose of exploit­ing me for his own sex­u­al gain,” Rachael Den­hol­lan­der, the first women to pub­licly accuse the doc­tor, told Judge Aquilina.

This pat­tern of abuse can be traced all the way back to 1992 when Nas­sar was in med­ical school at Michi­gan State Uni­ver­si­ty. Nas­sar lured Den­hol­lan­der, then a teenag­er, to his apart­ment because he need­ed her to par­tic­i­pate in some “med­ical research he was doing and offered her a free full-body mas­sage as com­pen­sa­tion,” accord­ing to a fed­er­al lawsuit.

Flash-for­ward two years to 1994 when he start­ed to assault Olympic medal­ist Jamie Dantzsch­er, which would last for six years. How­ev­er, accord­ing to the law­suit that Dantzsch­er filed back in 2016, the USA Gym­nas­tic Orga­ni­za­tion knew about the abuse but “neg­li­gent­ly sup­pressed, con­cealed or failed to dis­close knowl­edge that Nas­sar had engaged in sex­u­al con­duct with team members.”

Because of the organization’s silence, over the next 20 years, many more par­ents would trust Nas­sar to treat their tal­ent­ed daugh­ters for the many ail­ments they would receive doing the sport they loved so much. And the abuse didn’t just stop at the Olympic team; Nas­sar con­tin­ued this abuse dur­ing his time at Michi­gan State University.

Michi­gan State Uni­ver­si­ty has also been accused of cov­er­ing up the years of sex­u­al abuse while Nas­sar worked there. “I report­ed it. Michi­gan State Uni­ver­si­ty, the school I loved and trust­ed, had the audac­i­ty to tell me that I did not under­stand the dif­fer­ence between sex­u­al assault and a med­ical pro­ce­dure,” Michi­gan State stu­dent Aman­da Thomashow said in front of the court and Nas­sar ear­li­er this week.

While the uni­ver­si­ty pres­i­dent, Lou Anna Simon, resigned ear­li­er this week after immense pres­sure from board mem­bers, that does lit­tle to make up for the years of neglect­ed abuse. How­ev­er, it did leave many fac­ul­ty and stu­dents at the uni­ver­si­ty talk­ing about sex­u­al assault on cam­pus. “To the sur­vivors of sex­u­al abuse at MSU…we stand with you in say­ing that the time is now for us to col­lec­tive­ly change and improve the over­all cul­ture and safe­ty and secu­ri­ty for every­one at Michi­gan State Uni­ver­si­ty,” Stu­dent Body Pres­i­dent Loren­zo San­tavic­ca said in a state­ment.

The NCAA also announced ear­li­er this week that they will be con­duct­ing an inves­ti­ga­tion at the uni­ver­si­ty due to their fail­ure to address the reports of abuse by Nas­sar. The USA Gym­nas­tics orga­ni­za­tion also announced the res­ig­na­tion of three top board mem­bers after the Unit­ed States Olympic Com­mit­tee demand­ed change from the top down. “Our posi­tion comes from a clear sense that USAG cul­ture needs fun­da­men­tal rebuild­ing,” said a let­ter writ­ten by the Olympic Committee.

In addi­tion, all staff and board mem­bers in the orga­ni­za­tion will now be required to com­plete Safe­S­port train­ing through the U.S. Cen­ter for Safe­S­port with­in the next three months and under­go ethics train­ing in the next six months.

While all of these changes are swift and pre­cise, will they actu­al­ly change any­thing in the ath­let­ic com­mu­ni­ty? These changes and res­ig­na­tions of top offi­cials are signs that the ath­let­ic com­mu­ni­ty is on the right track, but this sex­u­al assault case goes so much deep­er than the top officials.

The cul­ture of silence that was built around Nas­sar for more than two decades runs deep­er than many peo­ple acknowl­edge or are aware of, and that is where we need to start the repairs. While top offi­cials resign­ing sends a harsh mes­sage and sets a prece­dent for how sex­u­al abuse will be han­dled in the future, we must also look at the peo­ple clos­est to Nas­sar on the ground level.

This man was allowed access to young girls despite the warn­ing signs and he didn’t get that access by act­ing alone. One man that comes up in this con­ver­sa­tion is John Ged­dert, one of the top gym­nas­tics coach­es that worked along­side Nas­sar and one of his clos­est friends.

The gym­nasts he coached described Geddert’s coach­ing style as harsh and intim­i­dat­ing, which was the oppo­site of Nas­sar who seemed qui­et, calm­ing and even safe. Their oppo­site demeanors, how­ev­er, cre­at­ed an envi­ron­ment in which the girls felt unable to go to their own coach after being abused. “John and Lar­ry were like this per­fect storm,” Priscil­la Kintigh, one of the gym­nas­tics coached by Ged­dert, told ESPN. “You become so unap­proach­able that your own gym­nasts don’t feel com­fort­able telling you what’s going on…kids were ter­ri­fied of him.”

At Michi­gan State, at least 14 uni­ver­si­ty rep­re­sen­ta­tives, includ­ing train­ers, assis­tant coach­es and even a detec­tive, knew about Nas­sar sex­u­al­ly assault­ing women on cam­pus and did noth­ing in the 20 years he worked there. Eight women report­ed being assault­ing by the doc­tor, but still noth­ing was done. Nas­sar wasn’t fired, sus­pend­ed or even con­front­ed after those allegations.

One of those women, Laris­sa Boyce, was just 16 years old when she was assault­ed by Nas­sar in the 1990s after hurt­ing her back dur­ing a youth gym­nas­tics pro­gram at the uni­ver­si­ty. When she told the then MSU head gym­nas­tics coach, Kathie Klages, she was told it was just a mis­un­der­stand­ing. “She just couldn’t believe that was hap­pen­ing,” Boyce told The Detroit News. “She said I must be mis­un­der­stand­ing what was going on.”

Klages also went on to tell Boyce, “I can file this, but there are going to be seri­ous con­se­quences for you and Nas­sar.” Because Boyce didn’t want to get any­one in trou­ble, she remained silent all those years.

Now, maybe Klages hon­est­ly did not believe that Nas­sar was capa­ble of sex­u­al­ly assault­ing a teenage girl, but she should have at least tak­en her seri­ous­ly and report­ed the assault to the police.

This “don’t ask, don’t tell” men­tal­i­ty is preva­lent in all sex­u­al abuse cas­es, as many saw with the Har­vey Wein­stein abuse scan­dal, and it is used to silence women and the peo­ple they con­fide in. Nas­sar was a respect­ed man in the ath­let­ic com­mu­ni­ty who was trust­ed by hun­dreds of par­ents to take care of their chil­dren and their chil­dren trust­ed him to be a nice doc­tor that would help them.

It would be nice to think that this is the last time we hear about Nas­sar or any sex­u­al assault case, but that just sim­ply isn’t true. Sex­u­al assault will keep occur­ring if vic­tims are silenced and abusers are free to roam, but the 150 women who spoke about their ordeal at Nassar’s sen­tenc­ing prove that if women con­tin­ue to speak out about these injus­tices, we can start build­ing a new cul­ture that won’t let vic­tims be silent. They will hear them and, most impor­tant­ly, help them put their abusers in prison.

“Let this sen­tence strike fear in any­one who thinks it is O.K. to hurt anoth­er per­son. Abusers, your time is up. The sur­vivors are here, stand­ing tall, and we are not going any­where,” Aly Rais­man said, stand­ing before Judge Aquili­na and Nassar.