Larry Nassar was sentenced to up to 175 years in prison last week, effectively ending his life as a free man.
Yet nobody other than his victims will come forward and say what they knew about the former Michigan State and USA Gymnastics team doctor, one given a great deal of power. Instead, high-ranking officials at both USA Gymnastics and Michigan State are resigning to save face.
We’ve seen this act before.
Just like with ex-Penn State assistant coach Jerry Sandusky: Everybody was quiet — or ignorant — about the atrocities occurring behind closed doors for decades.
Only three people outside of Sandusky faced jail time; they were sentenced to a combined seven months behind bars. How does that happen? It’s because whenever something like this happens, society jumps to sympathize for the victims, skewer the lone culprit and admonish the enablers. Everybody then returns to life as if everything is normal with the abuser behind bars, failing to realize the bigger problem at hand is the system that enabled him to have such powers to affect innocent children.
An effective system of sports institutions would’ve prevented this from happening again in any other sport. In a system with people caring about their job and the well-being of their athletes, the Sandusky scandal should’ve prompted the discovery of Nassar’s transgressions years ago.
Now coaches associated with Nassar are retiring, dropping like flies from the stage of USA Gymnastics. But that is not enough. The countless women Nassar molested for years will never get a chance to forget or fully move on. John Geddert is a former head coach of the 2012 U.S. Olympic gymnastics team. He was cited by multiple victims as a prime enabler of Nassar. If you go to his Wikipedia page, the first line says he “is an American gymnastics coach, best known for allowing Larry Nassar, a former doctor convicted of sexual assault and child pornography, access to sexually abuse his gymnasts.” How can such a man be allowed to just retire and walk away from the scene of the crime? He was a mentally and physically abusive coach who discouraged athletes from speaking out against their own coaches. Gymnast Lindsey Lemke says he threatened her after she accused him of abuse in court. He wasn’t just adjacent to pedophilia and acts of monstrosity. By silencing victims, he was a facilitator, making him almost as culpable as Nassar.
This is not a commentary on strict coaching styles or if they are bad. As a high school athlete, I experienced playing for demanding coaches who expected the best out of their athletes. But my coaches always balanced that style with love, compassion and a bond with the athletes — things the abusive Geddert clearly never cared to share. Geddert went way beyond being a strict or demanding coach. Geddert was a tyrant.
Furthermore, Steve Penny served as CEO of USA Gymnastics from 2005 to 2017. He deserves equal blame for empowering predatory and abusive individuals. A CEO should be aware of the personalities put in place to run the system.
Last week, Geddert resigned, just like Michigan State President Lou Anna Simons and MSU head gymnastics coach Kathie Klages. Penny was out before all of this unraveled. Neither they — nor anybody else with a semblance of knowledge of the situation — should have the freedom to walk away unscathed. There should be investigations and trials for each of these people who could’ve done something but didn’t.
Once the situation came to light, jailing Nassar was easy. The tougher test will be holding the enablers responsible for their own actions.
Negligence is not an excuse.
Contact Zach Naidu at znaidu ‘at’ stanford.edu.