When Rachael Denhollander was 15, she was sexually abused by her doctor. The first time it happened, her mother was in the room. As the appointments continued, so did the abuse.
Sixteen years later, she told her story of abuse to The Indianapolis Star. Under the pseudonym Jane Doe, a gymnast had accused her coach of abuse in an investigative report IndyStar did in March of 2016 that inspired Denhollander to speak up, too. She didn’t feel so alone in the struggle anymore. Denhollander was the first to come out under her real name, inspiring more than 265 other young women to follow.
Her abuser, like that of the 265 others, was Larry Nassar, ex-Team USA Gymnastics physician and once well-respected doctor at MSU. He used his reputation to take advantage of his patients. And now, he has been sentenced to up to 360 years in prison for sexual abuse that occurred over 20 years.
This large sentence accumulated over three trials: the first, in December of 2017, was related to child pornography charges where he received 60 years; the main, most publicized trial, for his sexual abuse allegations, got him 40-175 years; the third and final trial, resulting in another 40-125 years, specifically related to the sexual abuse allegations at Twistars USA Gymnastics Club in Lansing, Mich. He pleaded guilty to all of these charges.
The majority of his victims were gymnasts; some had even won gold medals representing the United States on national and Olympic teams; others swam, skated, and played softball, soccer, and volleyball; some were Michigan State students; all were girls under the age of 21.
In the main trial, over 200 survivors came forward in the courtroom to give victim impact statements detailing the “medical treatment” that they received from Nassar. It was originally only going to be three days, but was extended to seven to accommodate every survivor that wanted to speak.
“It was scary, being up there,” said a former gymnast who gave a statement. “I didn’t feel bad at all, but it was just scary. My lawyer specifically told me, ‘Do not look at him. Keep your eyes on me or the jury. Just don’t look at him.” While this is the advice that many followed, some took their strength to the next level and spoke directly to Nassar, looking him in the eye as they confronted him, a few even demanding an apology.
Nassar’s earliest known victim is Kyle Stephens, not a gymnast but a family friend. He “exposed himself to [her] for the first time in a dark boiler room” when she was six years old. For the next six years, she reported, it continued anywhere and everywhere Nassar could get her alone. In her victim impact speech, she said, “Little girls don’t stay little forever. They grow into strong women that return to destroy your world.” This is one of the most repeated quotes from the trial.
Other victims of Nassar include Olympic gold medalists McKayla Maroney, Jordyn Wieber, and Aly Raisman, each telling their own stories in the courtroom. Maroney told an anecdote in which she woke up from the effects of a sleeping pill he had given her for the flight to Tokyo to find herself alone with him in his hotel room getting a “treatment”; Wieber mentioned that she thought “training for the Olympics would be the hardest thing that [she] would ever had to do, but in fact, the hardest thing [she] would ever have to do is process that [she is] a victim of Larry Nassar”; and Raisman left the courtroom with the words “abusers, your time is up. The survivors are here, standing tall, and we are not going anywhere.”
Denhollander was the last one to give a statement. “How much is a little girl worth?” she asked the courtroom. “How much is a young woman worth? How much priority should be placed on communicating that the fullest weight of the law will be used to protect another innocent child from the soul-shattering devastation that sexual assault brings? … I am asking you to tell these little girls, tell the young women, tell the world watching, that they are worth everything.”
In her statement, she brought up an idea that many seem to share: “I was confident that because people at MSU and USA Gymnastics had to be aware of what Larry was doing and had not stopped him, there could surely be no question about the legitimacy of his treatment. This must be medical treatment. The problem must be me.” One student at MSU was even told that “[she] did not understand the difference between sexual assault and a medical procedure.” Many other survivors mentioned feeling that they were the problem as well; they felt that they had either gotten it wrong or were doing something to bring this upon themselves.
The extent of Nassar’s abuse could have been diminished significantly. Years before Denhollander even walked into Nassar’s office for the first time, at least four young women had brought his abuse to adults in the athletic departments at MSU. These reports, given in 1997, ’98, ’99, and 2000 to track coaches, gymnastics coaches, and athletic trainers and supervisors, apparently did not “count as notice because these teenagers didn’t report it to the right official,” Denhollander said. “The 14-year-old didn’t go to the right person.” Had one of these authoritative figures, “right person” or not, brought this to light at that point, Nassar would have been stopped long before the victim count reached three digits.
The scandal appears to be officially over, but the effects that this will have on the gymnastics and medical worlds are just being realized. The investigation has widened to include the greater institutions that failed to stop the abuse and protect young girls for so long, including the US Olympic Committee (USOC), USA Gymnastics, and MSU. Each of these institutions have denied wrongdoing, USA Gymnastics even saying they reported the sexual abuse allegation to authorities when it learned about the abuse. Even so, the USOC required every member of USA Gymnastics’s Board of Directors to step down in light of their probable negligence. There will be an investigation by an “independent third party to examine how an abuse of this proportion could have gone undetected for so long,” the Olympic Committee has promised.
Thanks to Denhollander, whose words started the investigation into Nassar and were the last to be heard before his sentencing, we now have a national conversation involving influential athletic and academic institutions that had been expected to protect and mentor young women. In the months and years to come, the expectation is for big changes, they have to be, because the questions are big: How could this happen for so long? How could this happen at all? Why did it take so long for public exposure? What will be done to prevent this from happening again?
