A parade of horror and catharsis at hearing of doctor to Olympic gymnasts
‘I’ve been coming for you for a long time’
Adapted from a story by The Washington Post’s Will Hobson.
The criminal cases against Larry Nassar, the former physician for USA Gymnastics’ women’s team, are nearing an end this week with a marathon sentencing hearing that began Tuesday.
At the hearing, 101 of the more than 130 girls and women who’ve accused Nassar of abuse are expected to speak. The hearing could end Friday, when a judge will announce Nassar’s sentence for committing seven sex crimes Nassar has admitted to as part of a plea deal.
It has been nearly a year and a half since the case began to unfold. In September 2016, a woman filed a police report and contacted the Indianapolis Star. When the story published, Nassar was fired from Michigan State, where he treated local athletes at a campus clinic. The publication of the Star’s story led to realizations by dozens of other women: What they had accepted years before as legitimate medical treatment was actually sexual assault.
In court, the judge has repeatedly said she expects Nassar to spend the rest of his life in prison. The 54-year-old is already facing a 60-year federal term for child pornography crimes and a 25-year minimum as part of this plea deal.
The focus of this sentencing hearing has been the victims, many of them speaking publicly for the first time. Their accounts have been harrowing and heart-rending, but also, at times, victorious and cathartic. They have described the devastating toll Nassar’s crimes have taken, not just on those he abused, but also on the parents and coaches wracked by guilt, or possessed with rage, about warning signs missed and complaints ignored.
The statements
Over the first two days, 50 victims’ statements were heard, describing abuse dating from the early 1990s to 2016. The oldest victim to speak said she’s almost 40, the youngest was 15. Among the victims were two sisters — one assaulted at 9, the other shortly after she graduated from Michigan State — whose parents sat in the courtroom Tuesday, glowering at Nassar as their younger daughter confronted him, and then returned Wednesday when it was the other daughter’s turn.
Their accounts aligned around common methods Nassar used.
The abuse often happened at Michigan State’s campus clinic, where Nassar’s office was decorated floor-to-ceiling with signed pictures of Olympic stars and other mementos of his long career as the team physician for USA Gymnastics’ women’s team.
Here are three statements from women Nasser abused over the years.
‘I’ve been coming for you for a long time’
A projector screen has displayed photographs of victims taken at the time of their abuse, an array of girls in gymnastics leotards, figure skating outfits, and school class portraits. The first two photos projected Tuesday were of a smiling brown-haired girl named Kyle Stephens — in one she was about 5 or 6, in the other she’s a few years older, with braces — who is now 26. A former family friend of Nassar’s, Stephens had been known in court filings before this week as “Victim ZA.”
Stephens’s family often spent Sundays with the Nassars, the mothers cooking dinner while Nassar played with the children. Stephens was 6 the first time a game of hide-and-seek took a detour into the boiler room, she said, and 12 when she decided to tell her parents what Nassar was doing to her.
Standing a few feet behind her, Stephens’s mother wept Tuesday as her daughter explained what happened next: Nassar said their daughter was lying, and the parents believed him. They made Stephens apologize, and babysit for Nassar’s children. As a teenager, she said, she began to detach from her parents, often telling people she had no family.
“Larry Nassar wedged himself between myself and my family, and used his leverage as a family friend to pry us apart until we fractured,” she said.
Her father committed suicide in 2016, Stephens believes, in part due to the realization his daughter had been telling the truth.
“I’ve been coming for you for a long time,” Stephens told Nassar. “Perhaps you have figured it out by now, but little girls don’t stay little forever. They turn into strong women, who have come back to destroy your world.”
As Stephens spoke, Nassar took notes and mostly avoided eye contact.
‘He put his fingers in me’
A few minutes later, a photo of a beaming Korean girl in a leotard appeared on the screen, as her mother, Donna Markham, stepped to the microphone. Her adopted daughter, Chelsea, was 10 years old in 1995 when they visited Nassar after a back injury. After one of the visits, Donna said, her daughter burst into tears.
“She said, ‘Mom, he put his fingers in me, and they weren’t gloved,” Markham said. She considered turning around to confront Nassar, but her daughter begged her not to tell anyone, out of fear it would impact her gymnastics career.
“She said that everyone will know, and everyone will judge me, and the judges will know as I compete,” Markham said.
Her daughter soon quit gymnastics, Markham said, and her life spiraled into bouts with drug problems and depression. The image on the projector screen changed to one of Chelsea in her 20s, in a black winter coat, smiling, not long before she committed suicide in 2009, at 23.
“Every day, I miss her,” Markham said. “And it all started with him.”
‘I pray for you’
One victim, however, appeared to leave Nassar deeply affected for a few minutes. Jennifer Rood-Bedford was a Michigan State volleyball player from the early 2000s whose testimony produced one of the few moments of levity this week — she said she had made a plan to dropkick Nassar in the face if he ever tried to touch her improperly again — before she began to cry as she described her assault.
Bedford told Nassar she forgave him, citing her Christian faith, and her belief in the importance of forgiveness, and the possibility of redemption.
“Dr. Nassar, I want you to know that I pray for you . . . please know my forgiveness towards you is sincere,” Bedford said. “There is hope that transcends all understanding . . . What you’ve done, those choices you made, you can choose to be a better man, and to be a different person . . . seek Him and find that.”
As she spoke, Nassar’s eyes squinted, and his head began to shake, as if sobbing. He removed his glasses, picked up a tissue, and dabbed at his eyes, but the tears never came.
