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Larry Nassar will never see the light of day as a free man again. Once a world-renowned sports physician for Team USA Gymnastics and Michigan State University, the disgraced former doctor was sentenced to 40 to 175 years in prison on Jan. 24, 2018, following the seven-day victim-impact statements of more than 150 women and girls, which detailed the doctor’s sexual abuse over the past two decades, dating back to 1992. Despite the magnitude of evidence, Nassar has only admitted to only 10 of the accusations of molestation made by over 250 young women and one man.
Olympic gymnasts Aly Raisman, Gabby Douglas and McKayla Maroney were just some of the women came forward publicly to state they had been abused while seeking treatment from the doctor.
Nassar had previously pleaded guilty to seven counts of criminal sexual conduct, admitting in court that he’d used his trusted position to assault and molest girls over the years.
At his sentencing in a Lansing, Michigan, courtroom, Judge Rosemarie Aquilina said, “I’ve just signed your death warrant. I find that you don’t get it, that you’re a danger. That you remain a danger.”
During the sentencing hearing, Nassar gave a brief apology to the court: “There are no words that can describe the depth and breadth of how sorry I am for what has occurred. An acceptable apology to all of you is impossible to write and convey. I will carry your words with me for the rest of my days.”
However, following the apology and prior to delivering her sentence, Judge Aquilina read a letter Nassar had recently written to the court in which he defended his medical career, claimed he was “manipulated” into pleading guilty and accused his victims of lying.
The judge read his letter, in which he wrote, “I was a good doctor because my treatments worked, and those patients that are now speaking out are the same ones that praised and came back over and over. The media convinced them that everything I did was wrong and bad. They feel I broke their trust. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.”
On Dec. 17, 2018, the Michigan Court of Appeals agreed to review Aquilina’s potentially unfair treatment of Nassar. The decision to review the sentencing came after the appellate court rejected an appeal in a 40-year sentence that a different judge ordered for Nassar.
Prior to the January 2018 sentencing, Nassar pleaded guilty on July 11, 2017 to receiving child pornography in 2004, possession of pornographic images of children dating from 2004 to 2016, and tampering with evidence by destroying and concealing the images. Nassar was sentenced to 60 years in prison for those federal charges.
Nassar was arrested by the FBI in December 2016 after agents discovered more than 37,000 images containing child pornography and a video showing him molesting underage girls.
Claims of Nassar’s abuse first went public in a story published in the Indy Star on Sept. 12, 2016. The article detailed how former gymnast Rachael Denhollander went to the publication after filing a criminal complaint against Nassar in August 2016 with Michigan State University Police, alleging the doctor had sexually assaulted her when she sought to treat her lower back pain when she was a 15-year-old gymnast in 2000.
In November 2016, a grand jury indicted Nassar on state charges of sexual assault of a child from 1998 to 2005. The alleged victim claimed the abuse began at the age of six. In total, Nassar was charged with 22 counts of first-degree criminal sexual conduct with minors.
