Simone Biles hasn’t forgotten Larry Nassar’s enablers

Four gymnasts told the Senate to investigate the people who let their abuse continue.

MSNBC says the emotional hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee saw Simone Biles and three of her former Team USA gymnast make clear that that they want Nassar’s enablers – all of them – to face real accountability.

The article says the ‘unfortunate reality’ is that even five years on ’the reckoning’ is likely to still be years off. 

Nassar is locked up serving a life sentence, but the people and organisations who enabled him are no closer to facing consequences – or changing the culture that let Nassar thrive. 

“Fundamental errors” from the FBI’s field office are in part to blame. But worse, the review of the FBI’s handling of the Nassar case, found when confronted with those errors, ‘the officials under scrutiny tried to cover up their mistakes.’ 

But the athletes were keen to remind the committee that it was USA Gymnastics and US Olympic and Paralympic Committee that gave Nassar the cover he needed. 

“USA Gymnastics and the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee knew that I was abused by their official team doctor long before I was ever made aware of their knowledge,” Biles said in her opening statement. Nobody informed her that she wasn’t the only athlete Nassar had abused until after the Rio Olympics concluded in 2016. How lonely that must have been. And while the FBI’s failings had been investigated, she said, “neither USAG nor USOPC, have ever been made the subject of the same level of scrutiny.”

Aly Raisman – the second-most decorated American gymnast behind Biles – told the committee it was clear in 2015 that Nassar had abused at least six gymnasts. 

Raisman said instead of taking action, the FBI took over a year to respond to her requests to be interviewed. And when the interview went ahead, Steve Penny – then CEO of USA Gymnastics – arranged for it to be held at the Olympic Training Center – where she was “under the control and observation of USAG and USOPC.”

Raisman reminded the committee that Steve Pennu went for beers with the FBI lead agent in the investigation Steve Abbott and Abbott was trying to land a job with the US Olympic Committee. 

The report said Abbott was willing to paint USA Gymnastics in a positive light in exchange for a good word from Penny. Abbott did not get the job but he was able to resign from the FBI without consequence. 

Meanwhile, McKayla Maroney recounted to the committee how the agent who interviewed her in 2015, Michael Langeman, who has since retired, didn’t write down her statement until over a year later. 

The report found the statement to be “materially false”. Langeman was fired from the FBI on Monday. 

The string of testimony highlights how few participants in the cover-up have faced serious repercussions. 

There is a culture inside U.S. elite athletics that provided the birthing ground for Nasser’s depravity.

Raisman and Biles understand that this about more than one man’s evil, more than one sport’s failings and more than the stumbles of federal law enforcement. There is a culture inside U.S. elite athletics that provided the birthing ground for Nasser’s depravity. It’s a culture where winning is everything, where silence is encouraged and being a team player is justification for complicity.

Read the full story, Simone Biles hasn’t forgotten Larry Nassar’s enablers by Hayes Brown on MSNBC