{"id":18435,"date":"2018-02-06T17:20:38","date_gmt":"2018-02-06T22:20:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thecollegevoice.org\/?p=18435"},"modified":"2018-02-06T17:20:38","modified_gmt":"2018-02-06T22:20:38","slug":"unequal-suffering-the-trial-of-lawrence-nassar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thecollegevoice.org\/2018\/02\/06\/unequal-suffering-the-trial-of-lawrence-nassar\/","title":{"rendered":"Unequal Suffering: The Trial of Lawrence Nassar"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cYou do realize now that we, this group of women you so heartlessly abused over such a long period of time, are now a force, and you are nothing,\u201d Aly Raisman, six-time Olympic medalist in gymnastics, told Dr. Lawrence Nassar, a former doctor for the women\u2019s Olympic gymnastics team. Nassar is now accused by over 250 women of sexual abuse, Raisman included. A monster who practiced sexual abuse for years without consequence, Nassar has finally been charged with 10 counts of criminal sexual conduct and sentenced to 40-175 years in prison. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Instances of sexual harassment and abuse are frequently settled with quiet compensatory settlements and minimal vocal presence of victims. In April 2017, the <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">New York Times<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> reported that\u2014since 2002\u2014Bill O\u2019Reilly and his former employer, Fox News, made at least five settlements to various female coworkers of O\u2019Reilly. These coworkers complained about a range of inappropriate behavior and harassment on the part of O\u2019Reilly which, included verbal abuse, lewd comments, unwanted advances and phone calls in which it sounded as if O\u2019Reilly was masturbating, according to several documents and interviews. Fox continued to both renew O\u2019Reilly\u2019s contract and increase his salary as The O\u2019Reilly Factor generated hundreds of millions of dollars in advertising revenue for the network\u2014more than $446 million just between 2014 and 2016, according to Kantar Media. It wasn\u2019t until O\u2019Reilly\u2019s dismissal after the exposure of his conduct became a front-page story that the words of his victims were finally heard. In these types of settlement cases, often in the workplace, abusers and companies seek to buy the silence of the victim in an attempt to preserve self-image.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But 2017 was a watershed year for standing up to criminal mistreatment. Women, en masse, began to speak. Disturbing and persistent horrors of Hollywood and the media were exposed, sparked by the seemingly never-ending stories about mogul producer Harvey Weinstein. Now the athletic world is having its moment, and Nassar\u2019s case is astonishing in volume. Consistent with patterns of powerful figures in the media, as a result of the years of abuse, the entire USA Gymnastics board of directors resigned. Nassar also worked at Michigan State University and is now facing testimonies from victims at MSU. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The regiment and strict instruction that is so ingrained in sports, especially gymnastics, is a large factor as to why Nassar\u2019s abuse was able to persist for so long and hurt so many innocent young women. Gymnasts, like all athletes, are conditioned to be obedient and undefiant. They are team players who follow instructions without question under the guided trust that their participation will aid the success of the collective group. Nassar told his victims that his predatory acts were part of a medical healing process which, of course, they were not. They were sickly, selfish actions. Nassar\u2019s deranged sexual pleasure came at the harm of innocent victims. But these young women, whom society constantly reminds to be compliant and agreeable, were silenced out of fear of questioning the actions of a grown, adult man with a professional title traditionally representative of a trustworthy figure. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A despicable factor in these cases is the consistent pattern of neglect demonstrated by the boards and officials at both MSU and the Olympic Games who had the power to act, yet never did. In 2014, Amanda Thomashow was abused by Nassar when seeking medical help for injuries sustained during her cheerleading years. She spoke with officials at the school, who opened an investigation into Nassar\u2019s conduct. Thomashow remembers these officials seemed disturbed by her descriptions of Nassar\u2019s behavior and determined to ensure such incidents would not continue. After interviewing both Thomashow and Nassar, however, three of Nassar\u2019s physician colleagues concluded that Nassar\u2019s actions were \u201cmedically appropriate,\u201d and the school decided that the case was not in violation of existing sexual harassment policies. Nassar\u2019s treatment was not medical, and MSU enabled the mistreatment of dozens of young women. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But the significance of Nassar\u2019s sentencing is undermined by the fact that, as of July 2017, Nassar, 54, is already serving 60 years in prison for federal child pornography charges. Nassar\u2019s life wasn\u2019t destroyed by the raw and emotional statements of survivors, nor his sentence; he was already going to die in a cell. Previous wrongdoings had ensured he would live his final years as a humiliated and hated criminal of society. How must this feel for his victims, not being able to harm someone who inflicted so much pain upon them? For many survivors, having their stories heard and seeing Nassar behind bars is reassuring. But the hatred must burn so much deeper in these young women and their families, who each day have to grapple with the memories of abuse. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Thank goodness survivors bravely and assertively came forward to tell their stories, and testified to the treatment\u2014both Nassar\u2019s and the officials\u2019 of the institutions\u2014 they endured. But perhaps this came too late. These young women are on the long, arguably never-ending road to healing from unspeakable traumas. As for Nassar, he will never truly be hurt for this.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div class=\"tmnf_excerpt\"><p>\u201cYou do realize now that we, this group of women you so heartlessly abused over such a long period of time, are now a force, and you are nothing,\u201d Aly Raisman, six-time Olympic medalist in gymnastics, told Dr. Lawrence Nassar, a former doctor for the women\u2019s Olympic gymnastics team.<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":62304,"featured_media":18436,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[803,687,802],"class_list":["post-18435","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinions","tag-larry-nassar","tag-sexual-assault","tag-usa-gymanstics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thecollegevoice.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/nassar.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecollegevoice.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18435","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecollegevoice.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecollegevoice.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecollegevoice.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/62304"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecollegevoice.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18435"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thecollegevoice.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18435\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18437,"href":"https:\/\/thecollegevoice.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18435\/revisions\/18437"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecollegevoice.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18436"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecollegevoice.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18435"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecollegevoice.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18435"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecollegevoice.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}