Disgraced US sports doctor Larry Nassar ‘stabbed multiple times in prison’
10 July 2023, 19:14
Nassar was jailed for the sexual abuse of female gymnasts.
Disgraced US sports doctor Larry Nassar, who was convicted of sexually abusing female gymnasts, has been stabbed multiple times by another inmate at a federal prison in Florida.
Two people familiar with the matter said the attack happened on Sunday at United States Penitentiary Coleman in Florida.
The sources said Nassar was in stable condition on Monday.
One of the sources said he had been stabbed in the back and in the chest.
Nassar was sentenced to decades in prison for sexually assaulting gymnasts, including Olympic medallists.
He admitted sexually assaulting athletes when he worked at Michigan State University and USA Gymnastics, which trains Olympians. Separately, Nassar pleaded guilty to possessing child pornography.
During victim impact statements in 2018, several athletes testified that over the course of Nassar’s more than two decades of sexual abuse they had told adults what was happening, including coaches and athletic trainers, but that it went unreported.
None of the women I've spoken with are rejoicing today. We're grieving the destruction across so much.
We're grieving the reality that protecting others from him came with the near-certainty we would wake up to this someday.
— Rachael Denhollander (@R_Denhollander) July 10, 2023
More than 100 women, including Olympic gold medallist Simone Biles, collectively sought more than one billion dollars (£778 million) from the US federal government for the FBI’s failure to stop Nassar when agents became aware of allegations against him in 2015.
He was arrested by Michigan State University police in 2016.
Rachael Denhollander, the first woman to publicly accuse Nassar, tweeted on Monday that none of the women she spoke with are rejoicing that Nassar was attacked.
“We’re grieving the reality that protecting others from him came with the near-certainty we would wake up to this someday,” she said.
Another victim, Sarah Klein, said the stabbing forces her and others to relive their abuse and trauma “at the hands of Nassar and the institutions, including law enforcement, that protected him and allowed him to prey on children”.
“I want him to face the severe prison sentence he received because of the voices of survivors. I absolutely do not support violence because it’s morally wrong and death would be an easy out for Nassar,” Klein said an emailed statement.
Michigan State, which was accused of missing chances over many years to stop Nassar, agreed to pay 500 million dollars (£389 million) to more than 300 women and girls who were assaulted by him. USA Gymnastics and the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee made a 380 million dollar (£296 million) settlement.
In June 2022, the Michigan supreme court rejected a final appeal from Nassar.
Lawyers for Nassar said he was treated unfairly in 2018 and deserved a new hearing, based on vengeful remarks by a judge who called him a “monster” who would “wither” in prison like the wicked witch in “The Wizard of Oz”.
“I just signed your death warrant,” Ingham County Judge Rosemarie Aquilina said of Nassar’s 40-year sentence.
The state supreme court said that Nassar’s appeal was a “close question” and that it had “concerns” over the judge’s conduct.
But the court also noted that Judge Aquilina, despite her provocative comments, stuck to the sentencing agreement worked out by lawyers in the case.
“We decline to expend additional judicial resources and further subject the victims in this case to additional trauma where the questions at hand present nothing more than an academic exercise,” the court said in a two-page order.
More than 150 victims spoke or submitted statements during an extraordinary seven-day hearing in Judge
Aquilina’s court more than four years ago.
“It’s over. Almost six years after I filed the police report, it’s finally over,” said Rachael Denhollander, the first woman to publicly accuse Nassar.
