USA Gymnastics: The Larry Nassar Cases

On August 16, 1963, a criminal was born. Larry Nassar. For over roughly 30 years he abused 150+ children in USA Gymnastics. The question of how this went on so long without being detected has lingered, but the answer is clear. It did not. It was detected, but covered up. Yet, the people least expected to know about it did. USA Gymnastics, an organization meant to protect gymnasts knew. They knew and because of that, it is brutally clear that USA Gymnastics is involved with the Larry Nassar cases because they covered up the abuse experienced by those gymnasts, many of the board members resigned, and there were many missed opportunities to protect these girls. Pride? Ashamed? Inconvenience? Imperfection? Were these the motives for USA Gymnastics

In fact, many of USA Gymnastics employees resigned under pressure, and out of fright. "...three top USA Gymnastics board members resigned," (Hobson 18). Three important people in USAG resigned because of these cases. Because of everything that happened multiple TOP USA Gymnastics board members resigned. This could have happened because they were guilty, or afraid of getting in trouble, or they held back information that could jeopardize their whole future. But does them quitting actually help or does it make them look more guilty? It makes them look more guilty, because it makes them seem as if they have something to hide. However, the board members were not alone. "USA Gymnastics chief executive had resigned over his handling of the case" (Hobson 14). Another person; the chief executive of USA Gymnastics quit because of the way that he handled all of this. Perhaps he knew he would get in trouble, or he knew that everyone would find out that he did not do everything in his power to protect these girls. It poses the question of why? Why he did not do his job the way he should have, and why he did not protect these girls from the horrible sexual abuse they experienced. And while the answer is not 100% clear, it seems to be because he simply did not care. Not only did these people quit, but USA Gymnastics

They are supposed to do everything they can to protect them from people like Larry. USAG had many opportunities to help these girls, and they failed in every way. They did many things wrong. "...this investigator produced a 100 page report detailing all of the things they needed to change to keep children safe" (Kelly 8:25). USA Gymnastics hired a private investigator to see what went wrong. The result, a 100 page report of what went wrong and needs to be fixed. 100 pages of things that they likely discarded, that they missed. 100 pages on how this organization went downhill. That is a lot of reasons for them to not take care of the situation, and a lot of reasons why these girls were not protected. And all of them could have been fixed. Did USAG miss all of this because they did not care? They made many mistakes, and they were careless. They ended up hurting more than 150 people. Was it that hard to do their job, that hard to protect these girls? For them, it was not the fact that they could not, they would not do anything. "Nobody was protecting us from being taken advantage of. Nobody was even concerned whether or not we were being sexually abused. I was not protected, and neither were my teammates" (Armour 11). No one in the gymnastics world was helping these girls stay protected, no one cared if they were hurt, or being abused. This left them scared, and as if they had nowhere to go to. It made them believe that they