Lawsuits against USA Gymnastics, Larry Nassar, etc. - news & updates

The San Antonio paper has a lengthy article about The Ranch and the Karolyis and what abuse might have taken place there.

Thirteen former U.S. gymnasts and three coaches interviewed by The Associated Press described a win-at-all-cost culture rife with verbal and emotional abuse in which girls were forced to train on broken bones and other injuries. That culture was tacitly endorsed by the sport's governing body and institutionalized by Bela and Martha Karolyi, the husband-and-wife duo who coached America's top female gymnasts for three decades.
 
missing said:
The San Antonio paper has a lengthy article about The Ranch and the Karolyis and what abuse might have taken place there.

Thirteen former U.S. gymnasts and three coaches interviewed by The Associated Press described a win-at-all-cost culture rife with verbal and emotional abuse in which girls were forced to train on broken bones and other injuries. That culture was tacitly endorsed by the sport's governing body and institutionalized by Bela and Martha Karolyi, the husband-and-wife duo who coached America's top female gymnasts for three decades.
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It was only a matter of time before an article like this was published.
 
If you want to see how this stuff can happen, just go look in the Eteri thread I started in the Trash Can. As long as someone is winning (like U.S. Gymnastics) people are blind.
 
I think the only surprise is that Aly wasn't already part of the lawsuits previously filed.
 
*** Jacob Moore Is the First Male Gymnast to Accuse Larry Nassar of Sexual Abuse :
https://www.teenvogue.com/story/jacob-moore-first-male-gymnast-accuse-larry-nassar
Jacob's complaint claims that he sought treatment from Nassar for shoulder pain in April 2016, when he was 16 years old. Nassar allegedly administered acupuncture to Jacob's "pubic area and in and around his genitalia ostensibly for the purpose of treating his shoulder pain," according to International Gymnast Magazine, despite there being no known medical link between the shoulder and pubic areas. Jacob has also accused Nassar of pulling down Jacob's pants and exposing his genitals to a female minor gymnast, while discussing "the fact that he was exposing Plaintiff Jacob Moore to the minor female gymnast with the minor gymnast." According to the Daily Beast, in the complaint, Jacob describes Nassar's actions as "sexual assault, battery, abuse, molestation, and harassment" for what he alleges was Nassar's "sexual pleasure and gratification."
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Sally Jenkins article in Wash Po with info from Raisman and a former athletic trainer who pre-dated Raisman on filth, bad medical care, and bad nutrition at the Ranch:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/spor...517e912f125_story.html?utm_term=.87a3562b988d

Moldy showers that routinely didn't have soap, poor nutrition: "Breakfast at the ranch cafeteria was powdered eggs, and a spray butter substitute, Raisman recalls. “Those things are so bad for you,” she says. “Everything seemed the cheapest, not real food.” Dinner was rice and mushy vegetables and a piece of frozen chicken of uncertain texture, “and everyone felt they were being fully watched” with every bite, Raisman says. If you performed poorly the reason was invariably that you had eaten too much.
 
Sally Jenkins has done a good job for many years telling stories to help athletes regarding these issues.

Here is a lawsuit in the making. This man must have missed the news for the past six months.

*** Gymnastics center owner jailed after hidden camera found in bathroom :
https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/mo...er-hidden-camera-found-in-bathroom/ar-BBKcXhg
James Kivisto, 49, owner and coach of Wind Lakes Gymnastics Center, is being held on multiple counts of possession of child pornography after a search at the business Tuesday, the Racine County Sheriff's Office said in a news release.
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Wow, this sounds as bad as forced labor camps under dictatorships. In many ways, it reminds me of what I've read about the camps in North Korea.

I clearly do not have even 0.00001% of the determination it takes to become a champion. There is no way I would have found it in me to put up with that after founding out after a first camp. Not for gold medals, not even for millions of endorsements even had that been a sure ending.

I wonder if there are gymnasts who actually withdrew from the elite level as a result of all this.
 
Choupette said:
I clearly do not have even 0.00001% of the determination it takes to become a champion. There is no way I would have found it in me to put up with that after founding out after a first camp.
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From what I’ve read, the girls/women developed coping strategies similar to what you or I might do in a tough situation. Six more days, five more days, four more days, 72 hours, 48 hours, 24 hours.
 
Choupette said:
I wonder if there are gymnasts who actually withdrew from the elite level as a result of all this.
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There was a short fluff piece during a recent NCAA broadcast where last year's NCAA all-around champion Alex McMurtry basically said exactly that, albeit in a more diplomatic way. She went to camp, she didn't really enjoy it, she was going to have to miss a lot of school, and so she made the decision that elite wasn't for her. That said, it was probably a good decision for her in the long run anyway, as even though she is so successful in her college career, it required managing around a back injury. If she had gone elite, she probably would have been completely broken. But from a USA Gymnastics perspective, it was their loss. And I'm sure she can't have been the only one.

In other news, Gymcastic posted the article on their Facebook page and Kelli Hill is taking issue with the details in it and basically calling Aly a liar. Very disappointing and shows that there is a long way to go of the culture change that still has to happen in the sport. Especially since I always thought Kelli was one of the good ones.
 
Jordyn Wieber rips USA Gymnastics stance on victim statements: https://www.ocregister.com/2018/03/14/jordyn-wieber-rips-usa-gymnastics-stance-on-victim-statements/
Wieber, in an interview with the Southern California News Group, said she witnessed a high profile USA Gymnastics employee being made aware of Nassar’s abuse prior to June 2015. Wieber also described the court filing by USA Gymnastics attorney Margaret M. Holm as continuation of efforts by the national governing body to silence victims of sexual abuse.
“That’s exactly what it seems like,” said Wieber, one of the women who read victim impact statements at Nassar’s January sentencing hearing in Ingham County, Michigan. Nassar was sentenced to 40 to 175 years in prison for sexually assaulting seven girls in the Ingham County cases. “That’s exactly why so many girls didn’t come forward and say anything any sooner because this is the culture that USA Gymnastics has created. If you say something you’re in trouble. If you say something you get a reaction like that. And so this is the environment we grew up in, and it’s an environment of silence and no matter what you do you’re just going to get in trouble from USA Gymnastics. So this is just another example to add to the list.
“It just feels like nothing has changed. It feels like they still don’t believe us. They still don’t feel bad. They’re still not accepting accountability for what happened, even though they are responsible. It’s just like another stab to the heart when you hear something like this. Here we are finally trying to get past this and get the justice we deserve, and they keep sticking the knife in even further.”
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Compared to USA Gym, United Airlines is starting to look like a model of crisis management. And that's saying something (or not). :(
 
Debbie S said:
Compared to USA Gym, United Airlines is starting to look like a model of crisis management. And that's saying something (or not). :(
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I’m afraid that United has a lot of practice... we’re sorry, we screwed up, we’ll pay you.
 
This recent arrest has taken a troublesome turn. The coach was arrested previously for child porn charges twenty years ago but it looks like they can't provide info yet about whether he was ever prosecuted or not. The police started a hotline because they expect a lot of parents & victims to come forward.

*** Wisconsin gymnastics coach charged with secretly recording girls was arrested for child porn in 1999 :
https://www.tmj4.com/news/local-new...ing-girls-was-arrested-for-child-porn-in-1999

There is also another coach who pleaded guilty to child pornography charges this week. He had been coaching all over the world until they extradited him back to the U.S.

*** Former Sacramento youth gymnastics coach pleads guilty to child pornography :
http://www.sacbee.com/latest-news/article205412399.html
 
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Allie will be speaking at CU Boulder as a keynote for the Conference on World Affairs (a huge event) in April. Very unusually, they're charging admission and only allowing students and faculty to buy tickets -- and they're limiting the sales. She's speaking in the large Macky Auditorium, so they seem to be expecting a very large crowd. I'm going to see if a friend can grab a ticket for me.
 
This article analyzes the expected defenses by USA Gymnastics & Michigan State regarding the pending civil suits.

*** Are USA Gymnastics and Michigan State Liable for Larry Nassar's Actions? It's Complicated :
https://www.si.com/olympics/2018/03/22/usa-gymnastics-lawsuit-larry-nassar
The question of institutional liability will gradually become the central one in the Nassar scandal. It is a more complicated question to answer than whether Nassar committed crimes. It will also take longer to resolve and will entail various persons pointing fingers at one another. Assessing prospective liability for those whose actions or omissions may have enabled Nassar is inherently divisive. Similarly, untangling the distinction between moral blame and legal blame is hardly a science.
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Sally Jenkins wrote another column about this issue.

*** Law enforcement must investigate U.S. Olympic organizations for handling of Nassar case :
https://www.washingtonpost.com/spor...fc7e94-32ba-11e8-8bdd-cdb33a5eef83_story.html
Why isn’t law enforcement investigating USA Gymnastics and the U.S. Olympic Committee? A prosecutor’s inquiry into Michigan State University has yielded important results with the arrest of medical school dean William Strampel on a range of charges, including willful negligence in the case of sexual abuser Larry Nassar. Somebody with a badge should similarly look at the USA sports organizations and seize their hard drives.

It took a raid on Michigan State for special prosecutor Bill Forsyth to find the evidence to charge Strampel for misconduct in the Nassar case and to uncover more stunning evidence that Strampel was allegedly using his office to perpetrate his own sex crimes, “to harass, discriminate, demean, sexually proposition and sexually assault” female students. There were pornographic images on Strampel’s work computer that appear to be of MSU students, who were perhaps coerced, and there was a DVD of Nassar “treating” a patient vaginally. You don’t get that kind of evidence from congressional hearings.
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Erin said:
The Karolyis have been deposed and are claiming, of course, that they barely knew anything of Nassar's activities, that he reported to a USAG official, that Martha just was responsible for training and Bela stayed out of it completely. Right.
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2018/03/28/us/karolyi-depositions/index.html?__twitter_impression=true

If anyone believes that, I have a bridge to sell them.
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I think the issue is more that they didn’t bother to pay attention to any of the staff’s behavior. All that mattered was medals - and literally nothing else. :(
 
They were too busy conducting their own abusive practices to care about other people's abusive practices...if they even saw other people's practices as abuse.
 
So Marta was only responsible for the training, and USA Gymnastics considered Marta in charge of everything. Therefore who was responsible for the gymnasts safety? No one, of course. Why bother.

I can't say I'm not shocked by the magnitude of what Nassar and Geddert did, but I've never been comfortable even only as a fan watching American gymnastics on TV, or many times, reading about it. You could sense that all the pressure was unhealthy. Now a little part of me feels guilty that I even watched competitions on TV.
 
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