More Bad News From MSU (Dr. Larry Nassar / Gymnastics Case)
http://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/michigan/2017/03/08/nassar-lawsuit/98903818/
The Larry Nassar scandal at MSU has potentially deepened considerably, per the Detroit News article linked above. Nothing to be joyful about, so let's keep it civil on the board.
Also note that this is, at brass tacks, a civil suit adding defendants to an action - that doesn't mean that the allegations are necessarily true. I know one faculty member at the MSU College of Osteopathic Medicine, and the general reaction regarding Nassar is one of shock.
But if the allegations are true, this scandal gets even closer to Penn State territory. An institutional cover-up spanning decades.
(PLEASE keep any comments tasteful - again, there is nothing to celebrate here, IMO.)
Several individuals with ties to Michigan State University on Wednesday were added to a civil lawsuit against former MSU and USA Gymnastics Dr. Larry Nassar, accused of sexually assaulting dozens of athletes over two decades. Among the individuals added were former MSU Gymnastics Coach Kathie Klages, College of Osteopathic Medicine Dean William Strampel, Sports Medicine Clinic Director Jeff Kovan, former MSU clinical psychologist Gary Stollak and Twistars USA Gymnastics Club owner John Geddert.
Per the article, these new defendants allegedly all were told about Nassar's alleged sexual assaults, all were allegedly required to report the behavior to authorities, and all allegedly failed to do so.
“There are certain people who have the higher duty to report (suspicion of sexual assault), such as a medical professional, a mental health provider, a clergy, a coach, a teacher,” said David Mittleman, an Okemos-based attorney who is representing several Jane Does in the case against Nassar.
Tomorrrow is 3-9
Why ruin Danotnio's birthday with this news? Yes, his birthday is March 9. 3-9.
March Dantonio!
Wait...I thought Izzo was "Mr. March"?
Go PSU, or whoever is playing Mr. March today, whoever he is.
Honestly, no. I want to enjoy 3-9. I want to make fun of 3-9 MSU on 3-9.
This is not something to make fun of or joke about. Might as well have it come up now.
Also has nothing to do with football or basketball at all.
For me, the 3-9 jokes were funny for the first few hours, now they are just old and stale, but a lot of people seem to still think they are funny.
It is rather ironic that today is 3-9, but whatever.
When people made fun of OJ Simpson and the circus surounding his trial, and there were a LOT of them, were they disrespecting the brutal slayings and deaths of Nicole Brown and Rod Goldman?
People are going to find humor in even the most tragic of situations, and IMO, it does not necessarily mean they are insensitve towards the tragedy or the seriousness of the circumstances.
I am not espousing joking about human tragedy, I am just observing perhaps we as a society have taken political correctness a skosh too far.
Very upsetting if true
I'm wondering if the mindset here was different than PSU. Obviously with PSU, Paterno was trying to keep his good name (and possibly PSU football's good name) out of this at the expense of kids.
Obviously msu gymnastics is no comparison to the beast PSU football is. I wonder if this was a thing where these people were good friends of Nassar's and just could not believe it to be true. Maybe they asked him and he denied it or convinced them he was using acceptable medical practices. Shame on them for buying it, or wanting it to not be true enough that they "believed" him.
This is all second hand, but what I've heard is that the general impression around the faculty is one of shock. Nassar was regarding as a star, and generally well-liked.
Of course, that's the point of the "must report" statutes. While football coaches don't have* these professional obligations to report allegations of sexual assault or physical abuse of minors, medical professionals do.
*Of course, to the extent they are considered teachers, maybe they do. I don't pretend to know the ins-and-outs of the "must report" laws.
On a moral level, it's all reprehensible. There are also school policies and workplace policies getting violated in these situations.
Still, a well-trained doctor should know that they have no discretion when it comes to whether they should report suspected/relayed sexual assault or physical abuse. Certain professionals have a legal obligation under Michigan law to report suspected abuse or neglect. See this link if curious:
http://www.michigan.gov/mdhhs/0,5885,7-339-73971_7119_50648_7193_7812-157836--,00.html
That changes things legally - specifically, it means that the professional learning of the suspected neglect is not supposed to adjudicate the issue. They are to report it.
All of which is to say that the allegations are pretty damned serious. Rather than a "any decent person should have reported this" standard you are looking at a "you were legally required to report this and did not".
I think the laws are important even if you expect people to have souls. Someone with a soul might "know" beyond a shadow of a doubt that what they're hearing cannot be true and may dismiss it. I don't think this is the same as "looking the other way". The laws are there so that they have to report it, even if they "know" it's not true.
It will be interesting to see the details about the MSU professionals and what they knew and chose to do about it. Their inaction led to more abuse, even if they didn't try to look the other way. "The greatest harm can result from the best intentions."
Caveat: I don't actually know the details of said laws.
Yes, especially because someone like the Dean of Osteopathic Medicine College would seemingly have no great motivation to protect an athletic program. I think this is a case of a renowned doctor getting the benefit of the doubt inappropriately.
And had been for many years. (The women's team on that level are usually young girls-to-teenagers.) So this has been a national story for some time. I believe I saw a segment on 60 Minutes recently, and because the Americas Cup was held this weekend (an annual competition in the US with select elite US & international men's and women's gymnasts), it was also covered during the meet on NBC.
EDIT after reading other comments: Generally the allegations from the former US program gymnasts were of "inappropriate touching" in the context of medical exams, young girls at the time and now old enough to know why they were uncomfortable. And they did trust him, and apparently he did help them medically. But many have come forward now to confirm what others have reported.
You don't know what the mindset was at PSU. The people around and above Paterno that knew something did not properly address it may have had the same challenge. Paterno may have convinced himself it couldn't be true. Or that he did enough. He's dead now, so we can't ask.
It is, frankly, quite possible that they had exactly the same issues believing this as those around Nassar. Perhaps the Nassar issue (c'mon, this is college gymnastics, nobody is worried about preserving a pillar-of-the-school athletic program here) demonstrates how it is possible for people who don't make a conscious choice to allow people to be abused can still perpetuate that abuse through criminal negligence.
Situations like this are why I get rankled when people just write off all parties in the PSU situation as malevolent villains who deliberately sacrificed children for football success. I am confident that there are people who had a moral and legal obligation to intervene who failed to do so not because they preferred to allow Sandusky to molest boys but because they could not fathom the enormity or the reality of the situation and failed to act. They never made a decision they believed to be morally wrong, despite making such decisions.
So it is very possible that people in the MSU circle allowed abuse to be perpetuated without intervening without ever making a consciously thinking "yeah, I think it's ok that he abuses these girls, because I can't be bothered/we have matches to win/etc."
And that matters, because one's own belief in one's moral goodness or the moral goodness of others is not sufficient to identify and prevent abuse. I certainly cannot rely on that feeling in my position--if someone who I think is a good person is accused of abuse, I am morally and legally obligated to act whether I think it's possible and serious or not.
forgetting the red headed coach guy who walked in and actually saw with his own eyes Sandusky committing the crime. That's not a case of not wanting to believe a buddy is doing things based on some young kids' claims or rumors. That is an adult witnessing the actual event and telling you about it.
I've forgotten nothing and have written pages of content on this board about McQueary and the surrounding issues here. And as a mandatory reporter I will not apologize for warning people pretty strongly against the mindset says only decisively malevolent people allow abuse to occur, because that actually makes people who do not consider themselves malevolent more likely to allow it to go on.
You've got a point about me being contentious here.
I'll say this: You're totally misinterpreting my stance on what PSU people did. They were morally and criminally responsible for failing to act, and I've said as much elsewhere on this board. I have been discussing motive. My point: One doesn't have to be a monster to allow monstrous atrocities to be committed.
I have it on good authority the DA's (Gricar) team met with Penn State offiicials in the summer of 1998 after the earlier 1998 incident was investigated by the police.
Allegedly, the gist of the conversation was that the DA would not charge Sandusky if he got help for his issue (showering with young boys and making physical contact while all soaped up in the shower). Penn State agreed and Sandusky was not charged.
The next year Sandusky retired and was given full access to the Penn State facilities as a professor emeritus with no restrictions on who he could bring to the facility.
2 years later Sandusky was caught by the grad assistant, Mike McQueary after hours on a Friday night doing something 'sexual' with a young boy in the Penn States Lasch building showers. The Lasch building houses the football offices.
Given the alleged conversation between the DA's office and Penn State in 1998, there was plenty of motive for Penn State not to report the 2001 incident to the police.
Our CEO told my this week that his daughter was treated by Nassar for several years and knew him somewhat personally because of that. They would travel up from Cleveland to be seen by him as she was a ballerina and they frequently suffer the same injuries gymnast's do.
He said to the best of his knowledge his daughter was never harmed by him (in fact he said what an amazing doctor he was in helping her) but clearly you can tell he's more than a bit shook up by the news. I had no idea there was a connection until then.
If somehow he HAD touched MY daughter - my new name would be the O.P.
Here's hoping he gets a thorough medical checkup every day and night in jail.
#BubbaSaysHi
My niece in Michigan was treated by him for years in gymnastics. My brother and sister-in-law didn't know him personally, but similarly, they had no issues, no instances of inappropriate behavior, and they were blown away by the accusations when they came out.
He was her doctor for several years through a number of injuries to her back and hip, but thankfully, nothing bad ever happened with her.
I'd expect that the fact that Nassar was a doctor for the US olympic gymnasts will be the focus in national news rather than a potential coverup at MSU. The PSU scandal got as much national media attention as it did because people care about football. They also care about the Olympics. I don't know if people care about MSU gymnastics.
Fortunately, whether it's publicized or not, this guy is going away for a long long time. Now, if there was a coverup or horrible negligence in reporting from others (MSU coaches/professionals), that needs to be publicized so there are some consequences for the people that failed to stop this.
60 Minutes ran a story about the doctor a few weeks ago but they focused on the Olympic gymnasts.
I can't get the video to embed properly so here is the link.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/former-team-usa-gymnasts-describe-doctors-a…
This is at least on par with PSU. Pretty sad.
I've told my daughter over and over, no matter who it is, if someone does something you don't want them to do, do whatever it takes to get away, and then tell me immediately. I've never been in that situation so I don't know how frightened a victim would be; I can only hope that it would be my voice in my daughter's head, and not that of the person attacking or abusing her. Just a horrible abuse of power.
I've deliberately avoided looking at too many details about this case, but one of the really difficult things about this is that it's a doctor. Certain medical tests can in fact be uncomfortable, and we are taught to suppress our natural discomfort to allow the doctor to do their job for our own health and well-being. So it is harder to deal with than an already-difficult situation where, say, a teacher or clergy who have no business ever making contact in that way does this. At least, from what I can see.
A horrible abuse of trust and power.
As for all these other coaches and administrators, we need to see exactly what the evidence is. I have friends who practice law in family court, and they tell me that there are now so many allegations of sexual assault (they are now standard in divorce cases, whether there is evidence or not) that it is sometimes hard to get the authorities to investigate. Some years ago, I learned of a sexual assault by a man on his adolescent children. While we succeeded in getting a restraining order against him, I don't think we ever got childhood services to investigate. They seemed inundated and skeptical of the allegations. So something like this may have been possible with regard to the named coaches and administrators. I have not information about their actions, but it is good to reserve condemnation until the specifics are told.
I went to high school with a lot of girls who ended up on MSU sports teams (rowing, volleyball, and basketball). Many of them were treated by Nassar, including an ex-girlfriend (who I have not asked about this) and all of them are furious, as they should be. They've all written letters to Simon and Hollis demanding answers because they were treated by Nassar after the allegations and investigation in 2014, some without another person present. And even those who did have another person accompany them into the exam room were never given an explanation so that they might make a choice to choose a new doctor.
My father recently had shoulder surgery out in Grand Rapids. He originally went to MSU Sports Medicine (my parents live in East Lansing) and then refused to go back after reading the reports. Those who worked with Nassar at MSU Sports Med (who've treated and operated on my knee and shoulder - I'm a guy so not like I was violated) did nothing to stop this either and they cleared what he was doing as odd, but medically relevant as far as treatments go. Needless to say, fuck this who situation. There better be some real repercussions outside of a PR nightmare for the people who didn't take this seriously and turned a blind eye.
That sick bastard Sandusky has always maintained his innocence in spite of dozens of victims testifying against him in open court. This position of Sandusky has somewhat helped PSU because Sandusky never has testified as to what PSU knew and when they knew it, because that would be an admission on his part.
It's not impossible that Nassar will plead guilty and end up testifying against US Gymnastic and MSU officals in their criminal and civil trials down the road.
That would be something.
against others. he is kryptonite and totally unusable. most definitely not for any criminal matters, and about 99.99% sure in any civil case.
by former DA personnel about what Penn State knew in 1998 during the upcoming trial of the 3 Penn State administrators. They won't need Sandusky to testify.
and comparing it to Penn State, I thought wow this is bad, but not sure it could be on the level. Now reading that article your not far off. This could be as serious as the Penn State scandel. I hope Nassar spends the rest of his natural life in prison and if anyone with held information or didn't report this also spends significant time in prison. This is ugly!!!!
for "pelvic" adjustments or therapy or whatever the hell it's called, the notion that it's OK for a doctor who is not the official family doctor of a child to engage in these invasive procedures for issues involving limbs requires a mind-boggling lack of basic human radar.
My daughter skated for many years as a synchro team skater, and like many skaters she had her issues with legs, knees, and her back. However, if she had told us that a team doctor had even suggested the idea of "pelvic therapy," I would have immediately contacted the police, the coaches, and as many parents as I could, in that order.
The ONLY person who should ever be engaging in these invasive procedures on a child is a regular medical specialist—not a fricking team physician—with the procedures taking place in a regular medical facility with other medical personnel present. And I would sure as hell get a second opinion even then.
The fact that alarm bells didn't go off in the minds of so many adults when they heard that "pelvic" procedures were being performed on so many young girls by one male individual is a testament to the willful blindness of humans.
We do what we're told. Sad truth about human behavior.