Larry Nassar Victim Impact Statement

Larry Nassar was a well-known, and highly respected, 54-year-old physician that treated the US women Olympic gymnast team and worked at Michigan State University. He was found guilty of sexually harassing over 150 women throughout his career and was sentenced to serve 175 years in prison, ensuring that the rest of his life would be spent behind bars, by Judge Rosemarie Aquilina on Monday, February 5th, 2018. A total of 156 victims (Grinberg, 2018) read their impact statements over the course of a week in front of the court; Nassar was made to listen, and realize the destruction he caused in the lives of countless individuals. When we analyze the factors that enabled Nassar’s sexual abuse and general misconduct to continue for nearly two decades,

“You can't trust a world-renowned doctor, who in the world who can you trust?” (Moghe, S and Del Valle, L, 2018) remarked Olivia Cowan, in a victim impact statement. This brings to light the factors that played to Nassar’s advantage and aided him in his sexual abuse of women. Two important factors were: role and status. Nassar’s status was that of a renowned, professional, physician which is a respected and high paying job, not to mention he was working for a well-known and highly respected organization2 at the time. A second factor that enabled Nassar was his role as a doctor. Roles are defined as “expectations and actions appropriate for occupants of a particular status” (Brymes et al., 2016) and the expectations of doctors are generally that they can be trusted since they are dealing with personal information of their patients. People willingly put themselves into vulnerable positions for their doctors, because they trust that the doctors have their best interest3 at hand. It is now clear that Nassar’s high status and the role he played enabled him to take advantage of his situation, and environment, to get what he

“Michigan State University, the school I loved and trusted, had the audacity to tell me that I did not understand the difference between sexual assault and a medical procedure. That master manipulator took advantage of his title, he abused me, and when I found the strength to talk about what had happened I was ignored, and my voice was silenced.” (Moghe, S and Del Valle, L, 2018) declared Amanda Thomashow, another victim. It is not clear why the leaders of the organizations did not take steps of a necessary procedure in order to prevent Nassar from further sexual misconduct, but it is possible that it had to do with status. If mass media was circulated that the physician they had employed for so many years had sexually abused members of their organization, it would certainly receive harsh criticism from the public and damage the reputation of the groups and consequentially their status. Regardless of the reasons why the organizations failed to protect their girls, the pattern of domination and submission between the women and the organizations in power is shown once again. When women reported Nassar to officials, it was in order to regain their power, the autonomy of their body, and their career. When organizations failed to take action, some gymnasts were forced to quit