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The main campus of Holt High School, where Dr. Larry Nassar served as team doctor for the district through a contract with Michigan State University. Lauren Gibbons, MLive.com
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treatments involving vaginal and anal penetration, performed without gloves or lubricant and without a third party in the room, the lawsuit says. Some of these treatments occurred in her hotel room while traveling for competitions, including a trip to China, according to the suit, which alleges the abuse continued through 2000. The lawsuit doesn’t say whether Jane JD Doe told anyone before filing her lawsuit in September 2016. Meanwhile, Lopez and another MSU student athlete each say they told MSU trainers in 1999 that Nassar was doing vaginal penetration during medical treatment, according to their lawsuit. Lopez said she was a MSU freshman on the softball team in spring 1999 when she saw Nassar for a lower back injury. During a treatment with a female athletic trainer in the room, Nassar digitally penetrated her vagina, Lopez said. She later asked the trainer about it. “She reassured me that this is what he was supposed to be doing, and this was going to help me to play pain free,” Lopez said. The penetration was repeated over multiple treatments in the spring of 1999 and 2000, she said. “He would insert his fingers, and it was in and out. My trainer described it as a kind of massage to help the bone.” Initially, Lopez trusted Nassar and the trainer. But Lopez said she felt “very uncomfortable” about the procedure, adding Nassar did not use a glove, explain the procedure or get consent. In her sophomore year, she had a new trainer, with whom she discussed the issue in more detail. Lopez said she also told another member of the athletic training department. Lopez told that person that Nassar’s treatments weren’t providing relief for her back pain, and she was feeling more and more uncomfortable. Lopez said she was told she could file a complaint against Nassar, but “I was really encouraged not to,” Lopez said. “At the end of the conversation, I remember her reminding me that he was a world-renowned doctor who treated elite athletes,” Lopez said. Lopez didn’t file a complaint, but she stopped seeing Nassar. “I left school feeling something was not right, even though they said it was OK,” said Lopez, who is now 32 and living in California. “I never forgot about Dr. Nassar, and I always wondered if there was someone else out there like me, who went through something really weird.” What really bothers her now, she says, is the feeling of guilt that she could have put a stop to it if she had been more forceful. But she also blames MSU. “As far as Michigan State goes, I do feel they need to be held accountable,” she said. MSU spokesman Jason Cody said the university is conducting an internal investigation. “We are talking to all relevant people, we are looking into this and to date we have found no evidence” that any complaints were brought to MSU before 2014, Cody said. POLICE CALLED TWICE
Criminal complaints were brought before police at least twice. Neither investigation resulted in charges being filed. The first occurred in 2004, when a report was filed with Meridian Township police by a 16-year old student athlete, claiming Nassar touched her vagina and breasts, according to a lawsuit. Police confirm the existence of the report, which was closed without charges being sought, but say it cannot be released because of the current criminal investigation. Meridian Township police did not notify MSU of the complaint, Cody said. And neither did Nassar, according to a Sept. 16, 2016, letter the university sent him notifying him of a potential dismissal. A similar complaint was filed with MSU police in 2014, where an MSU athlete claimed Nassar “cupped her buttocks, massaged her breast and vaginal area and became sexually aroused” while treating her hip pain, according to a lawsuit. Nassar was suspended during the 2014 police investigation, and the case was forwarded to the Ingham County Prosecutor’s Office. That office determined Nassar’s treatment was medically legitimate. The prosecutor’s office was swayed to drop the case after seeing a video demonstrating the medical legitimacy of Nassar’s procedures, said Gretchen Whitmer, who served as interim Ingham County prosecutor for the second half of 2016. The prosecutor in 2014 was Stuart Dunnings, who resigned in March 2016, amid charges of misconduct in office. In her lawsuit, the woman said, MSU’s investigative report omitted Nassar’s arousal and the fact that she had to physically remove his hand from her body. MSU officials declined to comment on that accusation. Moreover, two women allege Nassar appeared sexually aroused during the procedure, and seven of the 26 women who filed lawsuits said Nassar massaged or otherwise touched their breasts during a treatment, according to court documents. One result of the 2014 complaint: MSU established protocols for intravaginal procedures performed by Nassar. According to a memo in Nassar’s personnel file, he was told he needed to have a third party in the room when doing “anything close to a sensitive area”; he needed to minimize skin-to-skin contact in “these regions”; and he needed to explain such treatments in detail to the third party. No other doctors at MSU do intravaginal sports-medicine procedures, according to Cody.
FORCED TO RECANT? The same year Nassar was questioned by Meridian Township police, he also was contacted by a counselor with a 12-year-old client alleging abuse, according to court documents. That client is the alleged victim in criminal sexual conduct charges filed by the state against Nassar in November. According to a transcript of that Nov. 21 hearing seeking an arrest warrant for Nassar, MSU Detective Sgt. Andrea Munford said the victim is now a 24-year-old woman whose parents were close friends with the Nassars. Starting in 1998 when she was 6 years old, Munford testified, “Nassar exposed his erect penis to her in the basement,” and told the girl “she could see it or touch it whenever she wanted.” For the next five years, Nassar repeatedly exposed himself to the girl, masturbated in front of her, rubbed his penis against her feet and digitally penetrated her vagina, according to testimony. The girl eventually told her parents, who took her to a counselor, Munford said. The counselor arranged for a meeting between Nassar, the parents and the girl. “Nassar denied the allegation, and (the girl’s) parents decided they didn’t believe her,” Munford testified. Eventually, they made her recant her allegations. But since then, Munford testified, the girl has “recanted her recantation many times,” including to “multiple therapists and counselors, even saying his name to them.” ‘ATHLETE CONCERNS’
In 2015, USA Gymnastics quietly cut ties with Nassar amid unspecified “athlete concerns.” Nassar was part of USAG for almost 30 years, including 19 as the organization’s chief medical coordinator and team doctor for the U.S. national team. That included accompanying U.S. gymnasts to the 1996, 2000, 2008 and 2012 Olympics; Nassar didn’t go to the 2004 games because of the birth of his daughter. “When USA Gymnastics learned of athlete concerns about Dr. Nassar in the summer of 2015, we immediately notified the FBI and relieved Nassar of any further assignments,” USAG said in a statement in response to MLive questions. A spokesman for the U.S. Department of Justice said federal officials are not commenting on the Nassar investigation, including when or if the FBI was contacted by USA Gymnastics. Cody said USA Gymnastics did not tell Michigan State in 2015 about allegations involving Nassar, who continued seeing patients at MSU for a year after he left the USAG. Nassar wasn’t suspended at MSU until late August 2016, shortly after Denhollander filed a police report. As more complaints flooded in, Nassar was fired three weeks later. The official reason for his termination, according to his personnel file: Nassar failed to follow the protocols established after a 2014 investigation. “The MSU Police has received two new patient complaints which post-date these directives,” a Sept. 16 letter to Nassar from the university states. “Both individuals allege that you performed the procedure at issue without gloves, without another member of the medical staff in the room, and without providing an explanation of the procedure. …”
prepare the woman with what to expect, maintain eye contact with the patient and use lubricant to ease the patient’s discomfort. Continued intravaginal physical therapy would involve releasing fascia — connective tissue — using “gentle, slow sustained pressure,” the article notes. A physical therapist can also elongate a contracted muscle by employing “a contract/relax technique followed by a prolonged stretch.” Dixon said he periodically refers patients to physical therapists who use intravaginal or anal treatments for conditions like chronic pain in the coccyx. He said he usually has a third party in the room while performing the procedure, to witness the doctor’s actions and provide the patient some comfort. After a 2014 complaint against Nassar, MSU established protocols requiring him to have a third party in the room. He failed to follow that protocol after it was put in place, according to university personnel records obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request. “It’s something that most patients, understandably, aren’t too interested in or excited about,” Dixon said about intravaginal treatments. “But it can be a very hard condition to treat and when it has become a problem for people and you refer them to someone who has experience in that you can get pretty dramatic improvements from those sorts of treatments.” Bartley said she always uses a glove during vaginal procedures. That is required by the state’s Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs, argue attorneys for some of the plaintiffs. In rules that apply to employees with occupational exposure to blood, the state requires “An employee shall wear gloves if there is a reasonable anticipation of direct skin contact with … other potentially infectious material,” and includes “vaginal secretions” on a list of other potentially infectious material. Stephen Drew, a Grand Rapids attorney who is leading the lawsuit that involves 24 women, including Denhollander, said, to him, there’s no question the treatments were sexually abusive. “Bottom line, this was never an appropriate medical procedure,” Drew said. “You don’t do this without gloves, because it exposes the women to infection. You advise the patient what you’re going to do. You get consent. He never did that.” At least one of the plaintiffs Drew represents, Jane D. Doe, claims to have suffered urinary tract infections, vaginal bleeding and bleeding during urination related to Nassar’s treatments, her lawsuit claims. Matthew Borgula, a previous attorney for Nassar told the Indianapolis Star for a Sept. 12 story that Nassar had never used a procedure that involved penetrating patients. After a slew of criminal complaints, Nassar’s new attorneys, Matthew Newburg and Shannon Smith, told the Indianapolis Star later in September that Nassar used a medical procedure that may have involved technical penetration under Michigan law. Newburg declined to comment for this story. Nassar has not been criminally charged in any of the cases involving his medical patients. In separate matters, his medical license has been revoked by the state, and he has been charged with three counts of first degree criminal sexual conduct for allegedly sexually penetrating a family friend, while she was younger than age 13. He is also facing federal child pornography possession charges.
CULTURE OF ENABLEMENT?
Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette has spoken forcefully of the need to investigate Nassar, calling him a “predator.” Schuette said Nassar is the only focus of the criminal investigation, and the attorney general has praised MSU’s handling of the situation. The bulk of the criminal complaints — which involve Nassar’s work treating women at MSU or in venues overseen by USAG Gymnastics — remain under investigation by MSU police and the attorney general’s office. But the long list of alleged victims over a 22-year period is infuriating to Lopez and Denhollander and their lawyers, who feel Nassar could and should have been stopped long ago. “This whole epidemic of sexual abuse was entirely preventable,” McKeen said. “It should have been stopped after the first athlete made a report. It certainly should have stopped after a second athlete made a report.” Whitmer acknowledges that “in retrospect, I think a lot of people in the community, you know, are analyzing actions that maybe should have been different.” Alleged victims say the people they told about their experiences deferred to his medical expertise. “The way they would speak about Dr. Nassar, it was like he was a god almost,” Lopez said. Doctors may feel protected by their status in a community — which is all the more reason accusations of sexual misconduct against them must be taken seriously, said Laura Palumbo, communications director with the National Sexual Violence Resource Center. “Patients and communities place a great deal of trust in medical providers, and it’s alarming to consider appropriate investigations and sanctions may not have been pursued,” Palumbo said. Denhollander is particularly scathing about those who she feels enabled Nassar. “None of the adults who could have stopped Nassar, before he got to me and before he got to these other women, none of them did what they should have done,” Denhollander said. “Pedophiles are only as good as the people who surround them. “And Nassar was surrounded by some people who were very willing to put other things above the protection of children.”
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In August 2016, Denhollander read an expose in the Indianapolis Star alleging that USA Gymnastics, the sport’s national governing body, was mishandling sexual abuse allegations. The story didn’t mention Nassar. But Denhollander contacted the reporter, seeing the paper’s investigation as a way to bring Nassar to justice, even if it meant publicly revealing her darkest secret. In September, the Indianapolis Star ran a story detailing allegations about Nassar from Denhollander and a former Olympic medalist. Within days, Nassar lost his job and the MSU police were getting flooded by complaints from other former patients of Nassar. In the initial wave of media coverage, Nassar’s first attorney denied the doctor used any techniques that involved penetration. Although Nassar’s current attorney has backed off that assertion, the Indianapolis Star has said the initial denial occurred during a taped interview in which Nassar was in the room. In previous investigated complaints — including one in 2014 with the Ingham County Prosecutor’s office — Nassar showed prosecutors video of intravaginal techniques to explain his medical procedure, said former Interim Ingham County Prosecutor Gretchen Whitmer. No charges were filed in that instance. Denhollander remains the most vocal of Nassar’s accusers, and is one of three women who have gone public with her name. “Nobody cared enough to save the children this was happening to, and one of those children was me,” she said. “But now I’m an adult, and I have to care enough about the children who come after me.”