Beside strict diet and rigorous training, an athlete also has regular appointments with a doctor. The doctor works out the tensions, cramps and prescribes medication to the athlete.
Once a world-renowned sports physician treating America’s foremost Olympic women gymnasts, Larry Nassar now will spend the rest of his life behind bars.
The disgraced former USA Gymnastics and Michigan State University doctor was sentenced to 40 to 175 years in prison, a judge announced Wednesday.
After seven days of listening to more than 160 girls, women and parents describe the impact of his sexual abuse, disgraced gymnastics physician Larry Nassar turned to the courtroom Wednesday and quietly attempted an apology, saying, “There are no words that can describe the depth and breadth for how sorry I am for what has occurred.”
Then Judge Rosemarie Aquilina read from a letter Nassar wrote last week in which he expressed very different sentiments. In the letter, Nassar complained about the length of his sentencing hearing, maintained that his touching of patients was legitimate medical therapy and termed some of the alleged victims’ accounts “fabricated.” As Aquilina read excerpts, some in the courtroom gasped.
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“My treatments worked, and those patients that are now speaking out were the same ones that praised me,” Aquilina said as she read Nassar’s words. “. . . The media convinced them that everything I did was wrong and bad. . . . Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.”
The judge then addressed Nassar directly.
“It was not treatment what you did; it was not medical,” Aquilina replied. “I wouldn’t send my dogs to you, sir.”
Finally, Aquilina delivered her sentence — a minimum of 40 years, a maximum of 175 years in Michigan state prison — effectively guaranteeing a life sentence for the 54-year-old former Michigan State University and USA Gymnastics team physician, who also faces a 60-year sentence for federal child pornography crimes.
“I’ve just signed your death warrant,” she said.
And with that, the judge brought an end to an extraordinary sentencing hearing that introduced fresh national attention and outrage to a case whose core facts have been well established for nearly a year.
Many of the women said that when they spoke up about the treatment, they were ignored or their concerns brushed aside by organizations in power, primarily USA Gymnastics, Michigan State University and the US Olympic Committee.
The final speaker was Rachael Denhollander, the former gymnast who first made Nassar’s abuse public in a September 2016 story in an international daily newspaper. She meticulously laid out the ways that the systems failed her and other women and allowed this abuse to continue for so long.
“Women and girls banded together to fight for themselves because no one else would do it,” she said.
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According to the allegations, Nassar committed sexual assault during medical examinations by injecting a sedative that made the athletes dizzy.
Following these allegations, the US Gymnastics team management fired Nassar in the same month after learning of athlete concerns. He was expelled from the Michigan State University as well due to same reasons.
Separately, he has already been sentenced to 60 years in prison for federal child pornography charges. He also has pleaded guilty to three charges of criminal sexual conduct in Eaton County in Michigan and is due to be sentenced on those charges on January 31.
The women — almost all of whom initially met Nassar for a sports-related injury — said that, because of the abuse, they struggled with anxiety, depression, and instances of self-harm. Others said they no longer trust doctors or that they shrink from any physical touch.
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