Nassar Abuse Survivors Reach a $380 Million Settlement

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Nassar Abuse Survivors Reach a 0 Million Settlement

At a hearing, FBI director Christopher A. Wray apologized for the agency’s mismanagement of the case. In a heartbreaking testimony in September, Biles, Maroney, Raisman and former national teammate Maggie Nichols described how the FBI ignored Nassar’s abuse while the investigation stalled and children suffered.

A legacy of the case will be how it enabled victims to speak about their sexual abuse and face their accusers. At Nassar’s conviction hearings in early 2018, more than 100 girls and women he had abused, including some of his patients at Michigan State University, stood before him giving testimony about how he had harmed them. Their statements were often defiant and told of how they had persevered despite the abuse.

The Nassar case made sports organizations aware of their guilt when athletes were abused on their watch. Steve Penny, the former president and chief executive officer of USA Gymnastics, has been fired from the association and is charged with a criminal offense for tampering with evidence in the case. Scott Blackmun resigned as chairman of the board of directors of USOPC under pressure

“The comparison shows that there is total injustice here,” said John C. Manly, an attorney who represents many of the victims. “But if you really want to stop people making child molesters possible, you have to start sending people to jail.”

Manly added that the only person in jail in the case is Nassar, saying that Nassar’s enablers, including sports, university and law enforcement officials, heard complaints about him but were never followed up, also in the Should be prison. Manly said he had mixed feelings about the settlement: it hurts, he said it was five years since he filed his first lawsuit on the case.

“In my life, I don’t know why it took five years and hundreds of millions of dollars to spend on corporate attorneys to get to this point,” he said.