Medal of horror: return to the case of Larry Nassar, rapist of 265 young gymnasts

Medal of horror: return to the case of Larry Nassar, rapist of 265 young gymnasts

Medal of horror: return to the case of Larry NASSAR, rapist of 265 young gymnasts He’s a small dark-haired man with limp features, sagging lips and droopy eyes beneath clear-rimmed glasses. Larry NASSAR looks like Mister Nobody, but under his false air of Droopy, this graduate in physio-osteopathy has violated generations of gymnasts. At least 265 young girls, and probably more than double if we take into account those who have not been identified. Today, the therapist is serving a life sentence in a very high security penitentiary, not without having affirmed during his trial in 2018: “I was a good doctor, my treatments worked. At the latest news, he was still repeating the same refrain, regretting the two decades when, warm in the training rooms, he drew on an inexhaustible pool, taking advantage of the passivity, if not the complicity, of sports institutions, condemned last winter to pay the sum of 380 million dollars in damages. to all those whose innocence was ravaged. NASSAR has been raging for so long that his fall continues to send shock waves. This spring, it’s up to the FBI to be in the hot seat for having delayed, despite several complaints, in opening an investigation. The “Army of Survivors”, as the survivors call themselves, does not give up, Simone Biles in the lead. USA Today Network/Abaca “We suffered and continue to suffer because no one did what was necessary to protect us,” said the superstar from his height of 1.42 meters. That the child prodigy of the BALANCE BEAM and the pommel horse, designated “the greatest gymnast of all time” – or “The Goat”, for “The Greatest Of All Time” -, was also one of the prey to the sordid osteopath, this is what shatters the legend of women’s gymnastics on the other side of. the Atlantic a little more, where this discipline, elevated to the rank of national sport, constitutes an almost geopolitical issue, a legacy of the Cold War and the time when prepubescent acrobats from the East dominated all the competitions. The “good” doctor Larry not only satisfied his urges, he was an indispensable cog in the factory, turning little girls into patriotic cannon fodder when the end of the Soviet empire sounded the hour of revenge. for the Yankees. “An entire system has allowed and perpetrated these abuses,” summed up Simone Biles, “America’s little bride”, during her hearing before the Senate, breaking the beautiful mirror in which an entire country was mirrored. Who wanted to know behind the scenes? Doctor appointed to the national gymnastics team and the University of Michigan from 1996 to 2015, Larry NASSAR prided himself on having developed new methods to “maintain world level” his mini-athletes: “It’s crazy about the care these children need,” he raves in some of his interviews. To get an idea of his “treatments”, all one had to do was take a look at the hundreds of videos he posted on his site, gymnasticsdoctor.com: “It’s happening in this tunnel, from the iliac crest at the pubic symphysis”, he holds forth in front of the camera, while introducing his. index finger into the said “tunnel” of a child-sized anatomical skeleton. His pedophilia is then almost like an elephant in the room. Recognizable for adults – coaches, breeders, club leaders – provided they take the trouble to look. But unspeakable for the hundreds of budding champions under the influence. “He would spread my legs and put his fingers inside me. He told me that I was going to hear a little noise and that it would put my hip back in place, “will testify later Jamie Dantzscher. The future Sydney Olympics bronze medalist was 13 when NASSAR began to “treat” her. At the end of the 1990s, the physiotherapist was already forging a reputation as a “miracle worker”His first steps in his career coincided – it’s no coincidence – with the rise to prominence in American gymnastics of an iron couple: Bela and Marta Karolyi, the Romanian coaches of the mythical Nadia Comaneci, whom they shaped from the age of 6 (with blows, as we know today, of slaps, insults and. malnutrition) and led to the Olympic firmament in 1976, before both moved to the West five years later. He, letting himself grow long “country” mustaches and displaying a new Texan look, she, keeping her perm and her pursed lips, as comely as a gulag guard, but putting herself, like her husband, at the service of the Americans. They make their students whip so much that the United States finally takes over the hegemony of the former communist bloc, at the cost of tears that Larry NASSAR is, from this time, responsible for wiping. During the Atlanta Olympics in 1996, televisions around the world filmed the ordeal of young Kerri Strug, forced to pass the horse jumping test despite a broken ankle. On screen, we see her writhing in pain, crawling on the carpet at the end of her performance, then carried at arm’s length to the podium by Bela Karolyi, while in a corner of the image appears the little dark-haired man with a wall-passing physique. And when they feel his hands sink into their private parts, he reassures them: “it’s to relieve the back”, “unblock the sacrum” or “relax the pelvic girdle”He holds the same speech at the University of Michigan, where he also lavishes his “care” on young sportswomen. “You don’t know how to tell the difference between a sexual ASSAULT and a medical procedure”, are heard saying those who dare to confide their discomfort. Graeme Jennings/Pool/Abaca “No adult listened to us”, will launch before the court, which finally tried the serial rapist in 2018, Aly Raisman, McKayla Maroney and so many others. So they fell silent, swallowing their “disgust”, obsessed by the “fear of disappointing” coaches, parents, supporters, straining towards a single goal: the Olympics. Clinging, they will explain again, to their passion for gymnastics, to the satisfaction procured by the perfect execution of a spin or a backflip, but little by little “dispossessed” of their instinct to judge any other sensation. physical strength through intensive exercises, sometimes suffered from early childhood, some having started at the age of 3 years. No complaints about a broken toe or a broken back. Negation of suffering, will also say the psychologists during the trial. Dissociation from the body “put at a distance” to bear all the outrages, including those of NASSAR. The official doctor was able to exploit their flaws at the same time as he endorsed, with his medical aura, the violence of the training sessions. This is why he was kept in his position for twenty years, including after being denounced to the gymnastics federation by the parents of Maggie Nichols. A report that could and should have stopped the infernal mechanics in June 2015. In the “USA team”, Nichols was then the best, behind the unbeatable Biles. The day penetrates her with his fingers, she confides in her friend Aly Raisman. “He does the same to me,” the latter whispers to him. Alerted by her daughter, Maggie’s mother immediately calls the boss of the federation, Steve Penny, determined, she says, to warn the police. What does it matter if its little workers are mistreated there. “Nobody did what was necessary to protect” It was not until September 2016 that the truth broke out, thanks to the journalists of a local daily, “The Indianapolis Star”While investigating the omerta that reigns at the federation, three ex-gymnasts, including the courageous Rachael Denhollander, the first to speak out, tell them what they endured with a certain Larry NASSAR. Their story is like a bomb. Once the heavy silence is broken, the testimonies flow into the newspaper: ten, twenty, fifty, it doesn’t stop. “Me too! The victims come out of shame. They are 156 to parade at the bar, two years later, when NASSAR, finally put out of harm’s way, appears in court. The survivors talk for seven days, exposing their “mental and physical scars” to their executioner (eating disorders, self-mutilation, depression, suicide attempts, this is what the “nice doctor” left them) and throwing in the face of the America their youth ransacked, while on social networks resounds the voice of Simone Biles, hitherto. silent: “Me too. “The icon reveals, via Twitter, that she, like the others, suffered the assaults of the pedophile physiotherapist: “For a long time, I wondered if it was my fault. I now know the answer and I am no longer afraid to tell my story. Since “The Goat” joined the “army of survivors”, she has been one of its most emblematic fighters, hiding neither her injuries nor the difficulties in rebuilding herself. Last year, at the Tokyo Olympics, she surprised everyone by withdrawing in the middle of the competition where she was once again promised gold. Far from returning with her head down, she broke a taboo: that of the “mental health” of athletes. Hers, she explained, has become too fragile, abused by and company: “We must protect our bodies and our minds. “Message carried in the name of his” army “and heard by these gymnasts who, from Canada to England, and since the scandal which shook America, rebel against the dictatorship of certain coaches, denouncing “humiliating” practices, “Abusive training”, “forced diet”, “morphological transformations” imposed before adolescence. It is on this “toxic culture”, warn Biles and her friends, that predators thrive.

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