Larry Nassar, the 54-year-old former MSU and USA Gymnastics doctor whose work took him to multiple Olympic Games, received an effective life sentence when a federal judge on Thursday sentenced him to 60 years in federal prison on child pornography charges.
“He has demonstrated that he should never again have access to children,” U.S. District Judge Janet Neff said as she imposed a sentence that went beyond guidelines calling for 22 to 27 years in prison.
He was sentenced to 20 years on each of three counts to which he’s admitted. The sentences are to be served consecutively.
Neff also ordered that his federal time would be served consecutively to state sentences for sexual assault to which he’s also admitted. He will be sentenced next month on those charges.The courtroom was filled to capacity. Among those in attendance were several victims of Nassar’s admitted sexual assault, their relatives and their attorneys. Several victims said after the sentencing they were still trying to process their feelings, but it was a step toward justice.
“I was blown away with what the judge did today, and I thought it was very fitting,” Larissa Boyce, who first raised concerns about Nassar to an MSU coach in 1997, said at a news conference after the hearing. “I can’t thank her enough for the things that she said.”
In court filings last week, Nassar’s attorneys asked Neff to show leniency, saying the doctor had worked toward redemption by helping fellow inmates and taking Bible classes since his arrest nearly a year ago.
Nassar, speaking in a barely audible voice from the courtroom podium on Thursday, told Neff he’d long battled an addiction he likened to alcoholism or drug addiction. His shame kept him from asking for help, he said. He said he hoped his crimes would educate people about the problem to prevent others from being hurt in the future.
“You go back and you wonder how I got down this path to begin with,” he said. “I really did try to be a good person. I really did try to help people … I hope one day I can be forgiven, and I’m going to take every day of your sentence to try to better myself.”
But Neff said Nassar’s crimes hurt so many people on so many levels. That includes the unnamed children in the pictures who feel assaulted every day knowing someone somewhere could be viewing their bodies, she said. It includes the women Nassar assaulted who now struggle to trust doctors and struggle with their own sense of self-worth.
He also pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice for trying to destroy the evidence. The U.S. Attorney’s Office said Nassar paid to have his work laptop wiped clean and threw away hard drives containing the pornography. Investigators were only able to obtain those hard drives at Nassar’s Holt property because the garbage truck happened to be running late that day, according to court records.
Some of the videos appeared to show Nassar assaulting young girls in a pool, investigators said. As part of a deal with federal prosecutors to obtain his guilty plea, prosecutors agreed they would not charge him with alleged sexual exploitation of children in relation to four reported victims.
Thursday’s sentencing ends one of three criminal cases against Nassar. He’s also pleaded guilty to sexual assault charges in both Ingham and Eaton counties and could get to up to life in prison in those cases when he’s sentenced next month.
In still-pending lawsuits related to Nassar’s admitted crimes, more than 140 women or girls have said Nassar assaulted them, often during medical appointments.
Nassar, who was led in cuffs out of the courtroom at the Gerald R. Ford Federal Building in downtown Grand Rapids on Thursday, was for decades an esteemed sports medicine doctor. USA Gymnastics sent him to almost every summer Olympic Games, from 1996 in Atlanta — where he was photographed in the iconic image of an injured Kerri Strug being helped off a platform — to London in 2012.
He started working at MSU, where he had earned his osteopathic medicine degree, in 1997.
His public downfall began in September 2016, when the Indianapolis Star named Nassar in a report on USA Gymastics’ lackluster response to allegations of assault. Rachel Denhollander, the first woman to publicly accuse Nassar of assault, was in the courtroom on Thursday.
The State Journal reported that between 1997 and 2015, at least seven women or girls say they raised concerns about Nassar’s actions to coaches, trainers, police or MSU officials.
Among those to publicly accuse Nassar of abuse are Olympic medalists Aly Raisman, McKayla Maroney, Gabby Douglas and Jamie Dantzscher. Maroney was in court for the sentencing with her mother.
Nassar left USA Gymastics in 2015. MSU fired him in September 2016. He lost his medical license earlier this year.
Source: lansingstatejournal.com
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