Who is Larry Nassar?

The former USA Gymnastics team doctor spent 30 years abusing more than 256 girls and women, until people finally started to listen to their voices.

You’ve probably heard the name Larry Nassar often in the past few weeks and even seen his name pop up in your social media feed quite often. But who is Larry Nassar and what exactly did he do?

To answer this question, I thought it would be appropriate to write my first blog post on this topic because my campaign was inspired by Olympic gold medalist, Aly Raisman’s speech at Nassar’s hearing when she said,

“Larry, you do realize now that we, this group of women you so heartlessly abused over such a long a period of time, are now a force and you are nothing.”

In the past 30 years, Nassar was a licensed osteopath, a volunteer physician for USA Gymnastics and worked at Michigan State University (MSU), where he treated both athletes and gymnasts. After athletes started to report concerns to the police, Nassar stopped working at USA Gymnastics after 2015. Nassar was fired from MSU a year later.

Nassar had already been sentenced to spend time in jail for possessing child pornography and being found guilty of sexually abusing seven girls. But after more than 150 women and girls spoke out against Nassar and revealed that they too had been sexually abused, he has been sentenced to up to 175 years in prison.

Larry Nassar abused 256 girls in the past 30 years. Let that sink in. And the heartbreaking truth is that this number only represents the women and girls who have come forward with their stories. Who knows how many more are out there.

Nassar’s case opened the floodgates of unanswered questions. One of the most important being, how did he get away with this for so long?

Well, Raisman said, “If we are to believe in change, we must first understand the problem and everything that contributed to it. Now is not the time for false reassurances. We need an independent investigation of exactly what happened, what went wrong, and how it can be avoided for the future. Only then can we know what changes are needed. Only then can we believe such changes are real.”

As soon as Judge Rosemarie Aquilina announced her sentence, the Olympic committee released a statement calling for all of the USA Gymnastics board to resign and take the necessary precautions to ensure that athletes won’t be harmed in the future.

Since then, every director has resigned from the USA Gymnastics, the president of MSU has stepped down, and USA Gymnastics has cut ties with Karolyi Ranch, which is the training facility where the abuse occurred.

While this shows that some change is being made, there are still so many questions. How did these organizations get away with ignoring the concerns and complaints of their athletes in the past? How did Nassar get away with this for 30 years? Why did it take so long to stop him?

Raisman believes that there needs to be an investigation and that the leaders of the gymnastics world need to be held accountable for not protecting their athletes and letting Nassar get away for so long.

So, now you have an idea of what Nassar did and why he will be going to jail for the rest of his life, but the next time someone mentions him, talk about the lack of accountability and transparency that is occuring not only within the world of gymnastics, but also the rest of the world. Inspire people to know that there is still so much to be done and that this is only the beginning.