Opinion

OPINION | BRENDA BLAGG: Olympic gymnasts relive horrors of doctor's abuse

Gymnasts speak out about horrors of abuse

They're young women now, amazingly accomplished gymnasts. Not just Olympians, but Olympic champions.

Yet behind their uncommon strength of character and absolute determination at last week's Senate hearing were the little girls and teenagers who endured the abuse of their team doctor -- and the obvious negligence of other adults who looked away from what they knew to be happening.

The young women included Simone Biles, the most celebrated of all gymnasts. She spoke through tears in her testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee as she squarely laid blame not just on Larry Nassar, her abuser, but also on "an entire system that enabled and perpetrated his abuse."

Neither she, nor any of the other acclaimed gymnasts who spoke that day, spoke just for themselves. They were the voices for all the young gymnasts Nassar preyed upon, all of whom were victims, too, of a system that failed to keep them safe or come to their aid after the abuse.

As Biles said, both USA Gymnastics and the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee "knew that I was abused by their official team doctor long before I was ever made aware of their knowledge."

Another gold medalist among the panel, McKayla Maroney, graphically described awakening with Nassar on top of her while she was naked. The then-15-year-old thought she was going to die that evening, just one of many times she was abused by the doctor who medicated her before that incident.

She and others reported that Nassar, under the guise of treating their gymnastic-related injuries, had repeatedly put his ungloved fingers into their vaginas.

Her reports to the FBI field office in Indianapolis were minimized and disregarded, she told the senators, which clearly just added to the pain she recounted at last week's hearing.

"Is that all?" the agent conducting the telephone interview asked Maroney after she explained how the doctor abused her. She took it as a callous response and said it was 14 months before there was further investigation.

What's worse, she said the FBI later made false claims about what she told them, choosing to "protect a serial child molester rather than protect not only me but countless others."

It has been six years since those initial reports to the FBI, a fact that Aly Raisman, yet another Olympic gold medalist, told the senators "disgusts" her.

"We just can't fix a problem we don't understand, and we can't understand the problem unless and until we have all of the facts," Raisman said.

She and the others are again asking for accountability from all the others involved, including the FBI, for not timely pursuing the complaints. That neglect led to dozens more girls being molested by Nassar.

He is, of course, off the streets now, serving up to 175 years under separate sentences for child pornography and for first-degree sexual conduct.

Nassar was actually accused of abuse by more than 300 women, who were children when he told them his abusive acts were medical treatments.

The Senate hearing is a follow up to a U.S. Justice Department inspector general's scathing report earlier this year accusing the FBI of botching its investigation and allowing the abuse by Nassar to continue unchecked.

One agent who failed to act, the agent in charge of the Indianapolis field office, was allowed to retire in 2018. Another agent was fired just a couple of weeks ahead of the Senate hearing.

Notably, FBI Director Christopher Wray, who was not the director when allegations against Nassar were made to the agents in 2015 and 2016, acknowledged that the investigators made "totally unacceptable errors" in failing to protect young women and girls from abuse.

For his part, Wray apologized on behalf of the FBI and said the bureau is doing everything in its power to make sure what happened in the Nassar case never happens again.

Nevertheless, it is unclear what more, if anything, will finally be done to address the past failure of the FBI.

Or to shake out the rest of the facts about failings by both USA Gymnastics and the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee to protect all those young women they left to Larry Nassar's "treatment."

All of the victims, including these high-profile victims who publicly relive their horror to keep it from happening to others, deserve the answers they seek.

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