GRAND RAPIDS (MI)
The Washington Post
December 7, 2017
By Will Hobson
A judge sentenced Larry Nassar, the former Olympic gymnastics team physician and longtime Michigan State University instructor, to 60 years in prison on Thursday for federal child pornography crimes. The sentence, handed down by a judge in Grand Rapids, Mich., ensures that Nassar, 54, likely will spend the rest of his life in prison.
Nassar, accused in civil and criminal complaints of sexually assaulting more than 140 women, also has pleaded guilty to several sex crimes in two counties in Michigan, and will be sentenced for those charges in separate hearings in state courts next month. The judge Thursday ordered Nassar to serve his federal sentence — 20 years each for three counts — consecutively to state sentences, seemingly foreclosing any possibility he obtains an early release.
Olympians McKayla Maroney, Aly Raisman and Gabby Douglas are among those who have said Nassar assaulted them.
“He abused my trust, he abused my body and he left scars on my psyche that may never go away … He needs to be behind bars so he will never prey upon another child,” Maroney wrote in a statement to the judge before Thursday’s hearing.
Once one of the most respected sports physicians in the country specializing in treating gymnasts, Nassar’s swift downfall started last August, when a woman filed a police report alleging Nassar had assaulted her during a medical examination years prior, when she was a 15-year-old gymnast in Michigan seeking treatment for back pain.
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