USA Gymnastics and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee reached a $380 million settlement on Monday with the more than 500 women who were sexually abused by former U.S. Olympic and national team physician Larry Nassar, ending a bitter legal battle that highlighted the organizations’ roles in enabling Nassar’s predatory behavior and then covering it up for more than a year.
U.S. Bankruptcy Court Southern District of Indiana Judge Robyn Moberly’s confirmation of the agreement comes almost three years to the day that USA Gymnastics, facing decertification proceedings by the USOPC and hundreds of lawsuits from survivors, filed for Chapter 11 protection.
The settlement protects USA Gymnastics, the USOPC, former USA Gymnastics CEO Steve Penny, former U.S. Olympic and national team coordinators Martha and Bela Karolyi, former USA Gymnastics board chairman Paul Parilla, an Orange County attorney, and Twistars, the Michigan club owned by former U.S. Olympic team head coach John Geddert, from future litigation related to Nassar’s sexual abuse.
The agreement, however, did not silence the growing demand among survivors and their supporters for Congress to remove the current USOPC board and strip USA Gymnastics of its national governing body status.
“Congress needs to remove the USOPC’s leadership and completely revamp that organization,” said John Manley, an Orange County attorney who represents hundreds of Nassar survivors. “These organizations are utterly corrupt. They only care about their junkets and money and medals. Athletes are just commodities to them and Larry Nassar is the result of that culture.”
Maggie Nichols in June 2015 became the first U.S. national team member to report allegations of abuse against Nassar to USA Gymnastics. Top USOPC officials, including then-CEO Scott Blackmun, were made aware of the allegations shortly thereafter but did not take action. The USOPC board did not call for an investigation of the Nassar matter until February 2018.
USOPC CEO Sarah Hirshland, in a statement, acknowledged the organization’s failure in the Nassar case.
“We are grateful to have reached a resolution with the athlete survivors,” Hirshland said. “We have the deepest respect for the tremendous strength and bravery these women have shown. We recognize our role in failing to protect these athletes, and we are sorry for the profound hurt they have endured.
“… Our resolve to make Olympic and Paralympic sport safe for all guides everything we do. This is our pledge, today and every day.”
The USOPC, like USA Gymnastics, had repeatedly argued during the controversy that it did not have a legal obligation to protect young athletes from sexual and physical abuse by coaches, officials and other organization members.
USA Gymnastics agreed to include at least one survivor on the NGB’s board of directors, SafeSport committee and the athlete health and wellness council. The Indianapolis-based organization also said it will strengthen its Safe Sport and complaint adjudication policies.
Mitchell A. Kamin, an attorney for the USOPC, suggested in a June hearing that the organization did not have a legal responsibility to alert authorities at Michigan State after top USOPC officials were made aware of sexual abuse allegations against Nassar in 2015, a year before the allegations became public, according to a court transcript obtained by the Southern California News Group. . Nassar continued to treat young athletes at Michigan State’s sport medicine clinic until September 2016.
Judge Moberly during that same hearing accused the USOPC of not “playing ball” in lawsuits filed by the Nassar survivors.
“USA Gymnastics is deeply sorry for the trauma and pain that Survivors have endured as a result of this organization’s actions and inactions,” USA Gymnastics president and CEO Li Li Leung said in a statement. “The Plan of Reorganization that we jointly filed reflects our own accountability to the past and our commitment to the future.
“Individually and collectively, Survivors have stepped forward with bravery to advocate for enduring change in this sport. We are committed to working with them, and with the entire gymnastics community, to ensure that we continue to prioritize the safety, health, and wellness of our athletes and community above all else.”
Nassar was sentenced to 60 years in prison in 2017 in the child pornography case. He was later sentenced to 40 to 175 years and 40 to 125 years in two Michigan state courts after pleading guilty to multiple sexual assault charges. He is currently an inmate at a federal prison in Florida.
The agreement, said Jessica Howard, a U.S. national team and Hall of Fame gymnast, was “validation that what we’ve been doing was the right thing.”
Howard, a Nassar survivor, joined dozens of other gymnasts in expressing skepticism that USA Gymnastics and the USOPC will follow through on the agreed upon steps to protect future athletes.
“I have absolutely no sense of closure and I’m completely skeptical,” Howard said. “The USOPC spent $100 million fighting us.”
Still, Howard and other survivors view the settlement as a victory by a group of tenacious women who shared their heart wrenching stories of abuse by Nassar and others in Congressional hearings and countless media interviews to keep the pressure on USA Gymnastics and the USPOC.
The survivors, Howard said, were driven by a sense of “obligation to future athletes.
“So that young people will not have to have the same fate we did.”
USA Gymnastics had a longstanding policy prior to the Nassar scandal of not warning member gyms or parents of athletes of sexual misconduct allegations against coaches or other individuals, a longtime top aide to the organization’s former CEO acknowledged in a previously undisclosed sworn deposition revealed by the SCNG in June.
Renee Jamison, the administrative assistant to former USA Gymnastics CEO Penny from 2005 to 2011 and later the organization’s director of administration and Olympic relations, also revealed in the deposition that employees were instructed by USA Gymnastics not to report sexual misconduct complaints to law enforcement or Child Protective Services – even though they were informed by the organization that they were mandated reporters.
Instead, USA Gymnastics employees prior to 2015 were told to forward sexual misconduct complaints to attorneys representing the organization – first Jack Swarbrick, and later Scott Himsel, Jamison said. Swarbrick is currently the University of Notre Dame athletic director. Himsel is now an associate political science professor at Wabash.
The policy, Jamison said, was one of the reasons why Penny and USA Gymnastics did not notify Michigan State University officials about sexual assault allegations against Nassar when they were first brought to Penny’s attention in June 2015. Michigan State officials said they did not become aware of allegations that Nassar had sexually assaulted Team USA members under the guise of medical treatment until the allegations were made public in September 2016.
Top USOPC officials were aware of allegations that Nassar had sexually abused Nichols and other U.S. national team members in the summer of 2015 but took no action to report the abuse to law enforcement or discipline Nassar and continued to be briefed on efforts by Penny to conceal the allegations from the public and potential future victims. Nassar continued to sexually abuse new victims at Michigan State in the 16 months between when USA Gymnastics, the USOPC and the FBI were told of the allegations against him and when Nassar’s abuse became public in September 2016.
USOPC officials were also briefed on discussions between Penny and W. Jay Abbott, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Indianapolis office, about Abbott receiving a top level security position with the USOPC.
The Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General recently determined that Abbott lied to DOJ investigators about applying for the USOPC post. The OIG investigation found that Abbott also lied to investigators about the initial steps he took in the days and weeks after he learned of allegations against Nassar in July 2015.
Abbott retired from the FBI in January 2018.
The Justice Department, however, has issued no indictments in the FBI case.
“The federal government has completely let the survivors down,” Manly said. “The DOJ, the attorney general have altogether failed these women. They know what happened and they’ve listened to some of the finest athletes ever to represent this country testify (before Congress) and they still will not hold their tormentors accountable. And that is an obscenity.”