The trial and conviction of Larry Nassar, team doctor for USA Gymnastics and osteopathic physician at Michigan State University, has exposed something rotten at the heart of an American Olympic sport.
Last week Nassar was sentenced to 40 to 175 years in Michigan state prison for sexually assaulting young girls. That followed his conviction in July on federal child pornography charges. Since his dismissal as team doctor in 2015, when allegations of abuse began to surface, a shocking number of female gymnasts have spoken publicly of Nassar’s abuse. More than 150 testified at his sentencing trial in Michigan. Scores of state and federal lawsuits have been filed against Nassar, USA Gymnastics, Michigan State University, the U.S. Olympic Committee (USOC), and the legendary gymnastics trainers Béla and Márta Károlyi. The latter pair stand accused of quietly allowing Nassar’s filthy crimes.
After the sentencing, the USOC threatened to decertify USA Gymnastics unless the governing body dismissed its entire board of directors. Last week, the organization complied and all 21 board members stepped down. The USOC is also requiring the organization’s staff and new board members to undergo “SafeSport training,” an online training course that guides trainees through lessons on physical and sexual abuse, hazing, proper locker room behavior, and so on.
This punishment is weak. Nassar’s abuses go back nearly two decades. That so many young women were abused, many of them repeatedly, means that at least some not insignificant number of staff and associates knew about it. Remember: the more than 150 women who have testified are only the ones willing to go public. Such a vast system of depravity strongly suggests that more was wrong here than a single depraved doctor. This was a culture of abuse, tolerated by many people who should have spoken up but placed a higher value on prestige and winning.
In 2017 the International Olympic Committee banned Russia from competing in this year’s games in Pyeongchang, South Korea for widespread state-sponsored doping. The punishment was deserved—the use of performance-enhancing drugs ruins competitive sport at every level. But it’s hard to conclude that cheating with drugs is worse than tolerating the systematic sexual abuse of young girls.
At the least, the USOC should have decertified USA Gymnastics. The committee has rarely meted out that punishment, but it has done so for lesser offenses. It decertified team handball’s governing body in 2006 for infighting. The U.S. Taekwondo Union was very nearly decertified in 2004 for financial shenanigans. What’s happened under the auspices of USA Gymnastics is a national disgrace and a blight on the sport. If women’s gymnastics weren’t the high-profile spectacle it is—if it were team handball or taekwondo—the USOC would have stripped its credentials already. In a more just world, the U.S. women’s gymnastics team would be forbidden from competing in 2020.
Of course, that would be unfair to the girls now dreaming of competing in Tokyo. But these young competitors would probably be best advised to take their talents to collegiate competition anyway. There, at least, they would receive education scholarships—and perhaps avoid the sinister win-at-all costs culture that covered for Larry Nassar.
