Six months have passed since Rachael Denhollander, the former gymnast who became the first woman to publicly accuse Larry Nassar of sexual abuse, stood in a Michigan courtroom to deliver her victim impact statement. The 33-year-old attorney, whose decision to end her silence ultimately broke open the worst sexual abuse case in US sports history, was the last of the 156 girls and women to speak during the disgraced physician’s marathon seven-day sentencing hearing.
“How much is a little girl worth?” she asked the court in remarks that would be broadcast across the world in the hours and days to come. “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 submit to you that these children are worth everything. Worth every protection the law can offer. Worth the maximum sentence.”
Denhollander’s 36-minute statement earned an ovation from the gallery and became an indelible episode of the #MeToo movement with judge Rosemarie Aquilina singling out her principal role in ensuring life imprisonment for a serial child molester who systematically preyed on vulnerable young athletes under the guise of medical treatment.
But in a phone interview with the Guardian, Denhollander expresses unease about the broader and more elusive systemic culprits still at large – and whether the Nassar trial, for all the publicity it generated, managed to bring any lasting change to the institutions whose collective failure enabled an unspeakable horror.
“I think we’re still really waiting to see how much it has changed,” Denhollander says. “Public opinion and pressure tend to go in swells and I think where we’re really going to see if we’ve affected change is what happens when abuse allegations are raised within a community. How does that community respond? Does the community circle the wagons around the predator? Do they still shame the victim, or do they listen? Do they support the survivor? Do they take those allegations seriously? That’s where you see how much it really matters.
“I don’t think we’ve tested that yet.”
Superficial changes came thick and fast in the immediate aftermath of Nassar’s sentencing to up to 175 years in prison. The outcome triggered the mass resignation of USA Gymnastics’ board of directors and Michigan State president Lou Anna Simon. Scott Blackmun subsequently stepped down as chief executive of the US Olympic Committee, a decision attributed to health reasons but with an acknowledgement that reform required in the wake of the Nassar scandal required a CEO who could work “24-7”.
The US Center for SafeSport, designed as an independent, neutral, safe place for individuals to report allegations of misconduct in Olympic sports, was created. Then in May, the Lansing university, where Nassar taught and practiced medicine from 1997 until 2016 and where much of the abuse took place, announced a $500m settlement with more than 300 women and girls who said they were sexually assaulted by Nassar.
But Denhollander points to Michigan State’s refusal to admit any wrongdoing in the statement announcing the deal, an evasion of responsibility which left her lamenting a missed opportunity for true institutional reform. Or, just last week, the US Olympic Committee’s attempt to remove itself as a defendant in lawsuits by arguing that Nassar, who was a volunteer for USA Gymnastics, was never employed by the federation nor were his crimes foreseeable by the USOC. The lack of accountability, she says, is endemic of a broader issue.
“No one at [USA Gymnastics] and no one at MSU or any of the departments that were involved have taken responsibility for what’s happened,” Denhollander says. “No one has been willing to articulate: ‘This is what we did wrong, this is the type of environment that we created.’ They can change all the policies and procedures they want, but if the tone from the top down doesn’t change and if there isn’t recognition of the failures that led to this, there’s no real hard motivated change.”
Nassar is safely locked away for life, but Denhollander describes the former USA Gymnastics doctor as a symptom of disease which remains unchecked.
“Predators know where they’re going to be safe, how survivors are responded to when they speak up and the message that is given from the top down as to how seriously abuse will be taken,” she says. “That is what makes a place either safe for predators or unsafe for predators. The way abuse is handled from the top down, that’s the single greatest factor of whether or not a predator is going to be safe, and whether anyone who receives a report of abuse is going to be motivated to handle it properly.”
She continues: “What I would really like to see happen with these organizations is someone step up and actually lead and say: ‘Look, this is what we did that was wrong, these are the consequences for our wrongdoing, and here’s how we’re going to make change.’ So far there hasn’t been a single leader that’s been able to do that. They have apologized that the abuse happened, but they have not apologized for what they did that allowed the abuse to happen.
“They have not identified the dynamic that allowed Larry to prey on little girls for 20 years, and until that happens the message from the top is essentially, ‘If you make a mistake, we’re going to protect you because it’s more important to our bottom line. We’re not going to admit liability. We’re not going to admit error.’ That communicates that there’s no motivation to catch predators, there’s no motivation for anyone who receives a report of abuse to do the right thing, and that creates an environment that’s very safe for predators, very conducive to abuse.”
(January 25, 1986) Larry Nassar joins USA Gymnastics as a trainer
(January 1, 1992)
According to a lawsuit, Nassar commits his first recorded assault, abusing a 12-year-old girl in the guise of medical research. A year later Nassar gains his medical degree from Michigan State University, where he will commit many of his assaults.
(January 1, 1996)
Nassar becomes national medical coordinator for USA Gymnastics before the Atlanta Olympics. He will go on to treat athletes at the next five Olympics and abuse many of them. Olympic champions Simone Biles, Aly Raisman, Gabby Douglas and McKayla Maroney are among those who said they were abused by Nassar under the guise of medical treatment.
(January 1, 1997)
The first recorded complaints about Nassar are received. According to a 2017 lawsuit, youth gymnastics coach John Geddert fails to investigate the allegations.
(August 1, 2016)
Claims against Nassar go public for the first time after the Indianapolis Star publishes an investigation into sexual abuse at USA Gymnastics. Rachael Denhollander files a criminal complaint against Nassar, saying she was first abused by him when she was 15.
(January 1, 2017)
Eighteen women file a lawsuit against Nassar, USA Gymnastics, MSU and Twistars Gymnastics Club. The lawsuit alleges Nassar assaulted the women over a period of 20 years and the institutions named in the suit failed to prevent his behaviour.
(November 1, 2017)
Nassar pleads guilty to seven charges of criminal sexual abuse. He later pleads guilty to three further accounts as part of a plea agreement.
(January 25, 2018)
Nassar is given a jail term of up to 175 years for sexually abusing athletes in his care. In total, 156 women make impact statement at his sentence hearing, saying he abused them. Handing down the sentence, Judge Rosemarie Aquilina says: “I just signed your death warrant”.
Last month Denhollander was honored with the Integrity and Impact Award at the BT Sport Industry Awards in London for leading the fight against Nassar, an award created to reward exemplary levels of ethics, integrity, transparency and trust in sport. Trophies surely weren’t what she had in mind nearly two years ago when she wrote a cold email in response to an Indianapolis Star investigation into the mishandling of sexual abuse allegations by the national governing body of gymnastics, eventually agreeing to be named and tell her story on camera to the newspaper. But to her the accolade carries a larger meaning.
“It really speaks to the overall hopeful cultural shift that we’re seeing, that this issue was seen as important, that what happened was seen as important, as something worth honoring. And so I really view it as a recognition of everything that was done not just by me, but by so many detectives and investigators and survivors who came forward.”
On Friday, Denhollander gave birth to her fourth child, Elora Renee Joy, whose middle name is a tribute to Andrea Renee Munford, the Michigan State detective who helped build the case against Nassar. The delivery kept her from joining the 140 survivors who accepted the ESPN’s Arthur Ashe Courage Award in a moving ceremony at the ESPY awards in Los Angeles. But while she takes pride in her leading role toward seeing Nassar brought to account for his monstrous acts, Denhollander can’t help but express ambivalence at the steep personal cost of justice.
“The publicity is still very painful,” she says. “The amount of detail that had to be released and what is on record publicly – those are details I never wanted disclosed. I don’t feel like any survivor should ever have to be in the position where they don’t have a choice, and I really do feel like because of the powers that surrounded Larry, we didn’t have a choice. I didn’t have a choice. Those types of details had to be disclosed, it had to be done publicly, because it was necessary to have that level of public pressure to make survivors feel safe to come forward and to override the institutions that have been protecting Larry for decades.
“I shouldn’t have had to be put in that position, though at the same time I’m very grateful to see it covered because that public pressure was necessary. And so the journalists that I have worked with, I am deeply grateful for.
“Seeing justice done is good. Seeing society pay attention is good. What we had to do to get there is wrong.”
