Beginning in the 1990s, hundreds of gymnasts—primarily minors—were sexually abused over two decades in the United States, which is considered the largest sexual abuse scandal in sports history. More than 500 athletes alleged that they were sexually assaulted by gym owners, coaches, and staff working for gymnastics programs across the country, including USA Gymnastics (USAG) and Michigan State University (MSU). Hundreds of them sued USAG, MSU, and the United States Olympic Committee (USOC, later USOPC), which settled the suits in 2018 and 2021 for a total of nearly $900 million.
The breadth of the abuses was first revealed by The Indianapolis Star, which reported in September 2016 that "predatory coaches were allowed to move from gym to gym, undetected by a lax system of oversight, or dangerously passed on by USA Gymnastics-certified gyms". Coaches and officials perpetrated, facilitated, or worked to conceal abuse in Michigan, Pennsylvania, California, Rhode Island, Indiana and elsewhere. FBI agents declined to investigate early allegations of abuse, then lied about it, according to a U.S. Justice Department report. Dozens of officials at USAG, MSU, and the United States Olympic Committee (USOC, later USOPC) ultimately resigned under pressure or had their contracts terminated. Several coaches and officials faced criminal charges, though few were convicted.
A central figure was Larry Nassar, a longtime national-team doctor for USAG and osteopathic physician in MSU's athletic department. More than 265 women said Nassar had sexually abused them under the pretense of providing medical treatment, including former USAG national team members Jessica Howard, Jamie Dantzscher, Morgan White, Jeanette Antolin, McKayla Maroney, Aly Raisman, Maggie Nichols, Gabby Douglas, Simone Biles, Jordyn Wieber, Sabrina Vega, Ashton Locklear, Kyla Ross, Madison Kocian, Amanda Jetter, Tasha Schwikert, Mattie Larson, Bailie Key, Kennedy Baker, Alyssa Baumann, and Terin Humphrey. In 2017 and 2018, Nassar pleaded guilty to federal charges of child pornography and state charges of first-degree sexual assault; he received sentences of 60 years in prison plus another 80 to 300 years. The scandal led to the Protecting Young Victims from Sexual Abuse and Safe Sport Authorization Act of 2017, which directed the creation of the U.S. Center for SafeSport.
Origins Since 1990, USA Gymnastics has kept a list of people permanently banned from coaching for sexual abuse and other reasons. The list includes Robert Dean Head, a USAG coach in Kentucky who in 1992 pled guilty to raping a 12-year-old, and Don Peters, the national coach for the 1984 Olympic team, who was banned in 2011 after two former gymnasts accused him of sexual abuse. In 2007, USAG began requiring background checks for coaches.
Yet USAG leaders also routinely dismissed warnings about coaches. For example, USAG received complaints about coach Mark Schiefelbein long before he was convicted in 2003 of molesting a 10-year-old girl. Similarly, USAG received complaints about coach James Bell at least five years before he was jailed in 2003 for molesting three young gymnasts. During testimony in the midst of a lawsuit filed in 2013, two former USAG officials divulged that they routinely dismissed allegations of sexual abuse that they did not directly hear from victims or victims' parents as hearsay. This pattern of dismissal attracted criticism from legal experts and child advocates, who have said every allegation should be reported to authorities and have noted that every state designates mandated reporters when child abuse is alleged.
Even when USAG leaders believed the accusers, they sometimes allowed coaches to continue coaching for years. For example, USAG leaders waited four years before telling the police that they had received credible allegations of sexual assault by Marvin Sharp, who became a USAG coach in 2010. Sharp was charged in 2015 with three counts of child molestation and four counts of sexual misconduct with a minor; in September 2015, while awaiting trial, he died by suicide in jail in Marion County, Indiana.
USAG received at least four complaints against Georgia coach William McCabe dating back to 1998, but they did not report the allegations to the police. One gym owner had warned that McCabe "should be locked in a cage before someone is raped". McCabe continued coaching for almost seven years until one gymnast's mother went to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) with emails that he sent to her 11-year-old daughter. McCabe was charged based on allegations that he had molested gymnasts, surreptitiously videotaped girls who were nude or changing clothes, and posted girls' nude images on the Internet. After pleading guilty to federal charges of child sexual exploitation and making false statements, he was sentenced to 30 years in prison.
In the years between 1996 and 2006, USAG received sexual abuse complaints filed against 54 coaches. The organization banned 37 of them from gymnastics, but allowed others – including some convicted of crimes – to continue coaching. One USAG regional chair spoke to the organization's president, arguing that a convicted sex offender should be allowed to keep his membership.
In a 2015 deposition in a lawsuit against USAG, USAG President Steve Penny said, "To the best of my knowledge, there's no duty to report if you are – if you are a third-party to some allegation ... You know, that lies with the person who has first-hand knowledge." Penny would resign under pressure in March 2017.
Also in 2015, USAG quietly fired its longtime Olympic team doctor Larry Nassar "after learning of athlete concerns". Nassar was a licensed osteopathic physician and the national team sports-medicine doctor for USAG. However, Nassar continued to run a clinic and gymnastics club at MSU, where he was a faculty member.
2016 revelations Despite these and other occasional revelations about the sexual abuse of gymnasts, the general public was unaware of the scope of abuse and the efforts to cover it up until September 2016, when The Indianapolis Star became the first media outlet to report their eight-month investigation of the abuse. The investigation drew on interviews and more than 5,600 pages of court records from the McCabe case, released after the Star Marisa Kwiatkowski requested the documents.
In September 2016, The Indianapolis Star reported that Rachael Denhollander was one of two former gymnasts who had made accusations of sexual abuse against Nassar. Following those criminal complaints, MSU reassigned Nassar from his clinical and teaching duties and fired him later that month. Since then, over 250 women and girls have accused Nassar of sexually abusing them; many of them were minors at the time of the crimes.
According to those reports, Nassar committed sexual assaults during medical examinations and purported treatments. The molestations ranged from his inserting a finger into the gymnasts' vaginas and anuses to fondling their breasts and genitalia. These were criminal acts regardless of consent since the victims were minors. Nassar initially denied the charges, claiming that he was performing legitimate medical procedures. In February 2017, three former gymnasts—Jeanette Antolin, Jessica Howard, and Jamie Dantzscher—gave an interview with 60 Minutes in which they accused Nassar of sexually abusing them. The gymnasts also alleged that the "emotionally abusive environment" at the national team training camps run by Béla and Márta Károlyi at the Karolyi Ranch near Huntsville, Texas, gave Nassar an opportunity to take advantage of the gymnasts and made them afraid to speak up about the abuse. Rachael Denhollander, one of the first women to publicly accuse Nassar, said in court in May 2017 that Nassar sexually abused her on five doctor's visits in 2000 when she was 15 years old.
Olympic gold medalist McKayla Maroney, using the #MeToo hashtag on Twitter, stated that Nassar repeatedly molested her, starting in 2008 when she was 13 years old and continuing until she retired from the sport in 2016. Maroney filed a lawsuit against Nassar, MSU, the U.S. Olympic Committee (USOC), and USAG. The lawsuit accused USAG of covering up the sexual abuse by paying Maroney a $1.25-million settlement that required her to sign a non-disclosure agreement.
During a 60 Minutes interview, Olympic gold medalist Aly Raisman also accused Nassar of sexually abusing her when she was 15 years old. Gabby Douglas subsequently drew criticism from her Olympic teammate Simone Biles and others for sending a tweet ("...dressing in a provocative/sexual way incites the wrong crowd...") that they interpreted as criticizing Raisman and of "victim-shaming". Douglas later apologized for the tweet and said she was also a victim of Nassar's abuse.
Former national team member Maggie Nichols accused Nassar of abusing her and documented the ways he groomed her by connecting with her on Facebook and complimenting her appearance on numerous occasions. It was also reported that it was Nichols' coach, Sarah Jantzi, who first reported Nassar to USAG on June 17, 2015, after overhearing Nichols talk to other gymnasts, later revealed to be Raisman and Alyssa Baumann, about Nassar's behavior. Simone Biles came forward shortly after with firsthand accounts of how she too had been sexually abused by Nassar. Jordyn Wieber made a statement at Nassar's court sentencing in which she also accused Nassar of sexually abusing her during her time at USAG. On May 1, 2018, former national team member Sabrina Vega also accused Nassar of sexual abuse, claiming she was abused hundreds of times, beginning when she was 12. In August 2018, UCLA gymnasts and 2012 and 2016 Olympians Kyla Ross and Madison Kocian came forward as victims of Nassar. The following month, Alabama Crimson Tide gymnasts Bailie Key and Amanda Jetter also came forward with accusations against Nassar. In October, Tasha Schwikert, a member of the 2000 US Olympics team, came forward as a victim and claimed that Steve Penny pressed her to publicly support USAG at the height of the Nassar scandal. In November, Florida Gators gymnasts Kennedy Baker and Alyssa Baumann made public allegations against Nassar; Baker said she was abused during the 2012 Olympic Trials.
Criminal proceedings Larry Nassar
In November 2016, Nassar was charged with sexual assault of a child. Michigan attorney general Bill Schuette stated that the assaults began when the victim was 6 years old in 1998 and lasted until 2005. He pleaded not guilty to three charges of first-degree criminal sexual conduct against a minor during his first court appearance.
The following month, Nassar was indicted on federal child pornography charges. According to the FBI, over 37,000 images and videos of child pornography were seized from Nassar's home, including a GoPro video of Nassar allegedly molesting girls in a swimming pool. Some of the material was found on a hard drive and disks that Nassar discarded in his trash bin outside his home. Nassar pleaded guilty to three federal child pornography charges on July 11, 2017, and was given three consecutive 20-year prison sentences by U.S. District Judge Janet T. Neff on December 7, 2017.