In this Aug. 17, 2013 file photo McKayla Maroney smiles after competing on the floor exercise during the U.S. women's national gymnastics championships in Hartford, Conn. Maroney says the group that trains U.S. Olympic gymnasts forced her to sign a confidential settlement to keep allegations of sexual abuse by the team's doctor secret. Maroney filed a lawsuit Wednesday, Dec. 20, 2017, in Los Angeles, against the United States Olympic Committee and USA Gymnastics. The suit also seeks damages from Michigan State University, where the team's doctor, Larry Nassar, worked for decades. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola,File)The lack of outrage about the Larry Nassar story should trouble all of us.
If you are wondering, "Well, who is Larry Nassar?" then you have proved the point.
If I asked you who are Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby or Jerry Sandusky, here's betting you would have a quick answer.
Not so much with Nassar, I'm afraid. He is the former USA Gymnastics and Michigan State doctor who pleaded guilty in November to numerous sexual assaults and child pornography charges. The courts in Michigan are allowing his victims to testify this week; their words are shocking.
While the charges and victim statements have been overwhelming, until now our response has been underwhelming.
For all of the speeches and finger-pointing that the Hollywood scandals produced, and all the good #MeToo has sparked, this case, in my opinion, is worse because it mostly involved children and teenagers rather than actors and actresses.
For all the outrage and hand-wringing about Sandusky, this is worse because of the scale. Charges and lawsuits against Sandusky ranged in the dozens. Charges and suits against Nassar now have been brought by 140 women.
Jay GreesonNassar is a certifiable monster who should be sentenced to death. No one in the sporting world - especially in the international Olympic community - is really talking about it.
It is a continued head-in-the-sand approach that the powers that be are hoping will go away when Nassar goes to jail.
But that and the harshness with which the international sporting community views competitive advantages rather than nightmarish crimes against athletes are rather staggering.
Heck, there are Soviet teams being forbidden from competing in future Olympics because of systemic, rampant doping.
Why has the blatant cover-up from the USA Gymnastics organization not received similar sanctions?
Because we believe this: There is zero, Zero, ZERO chance that sexual abuse and assault over that long of a period and with that many victims could happen without some level of knowledge from folks in the organization.
There's no way that coaches, assistants, supervisors and board members (and even some parents) did not either know or suspect something.
The main reason this story caught a wave of publicity this week was not because of the powerful words of the victims or even the excellent Outside the Lines piece on ESPN on Tuesday.
Instead, it was the power of celebrity - this time a social media exchange that included supermodel Chrissy Teigen - that really got publicity rolling.
When a story broke that former U.S. star gymnast McKayla Maroney would face a $100,000 fine if she speaks at Nassar's sentencing hearing after she signed a non-disclosure agreement with U.S. Gymnastics in the wake of a $1.25 million settlement, Teigen took to Twitter.
She wrote: "The entire principle of this should be fought - an NDA to stay quiet about this serial monster with over 140 accusers, but I would be absolutely honored to pay this fine for you, McKayla."
Teigen's Tweet got almost 4,000 comments, almost 70,000 likes and almost 300,000 retweets in less than 24 hours.
Still, the questions raised in the ESPN show must be addressed: How did the people within the U.S. gymnastics community enable Nassar?
If steroid use is bad enough to get the Russians banned, how can this be anything but 10 times worse?
Former family friend to the Nassar family, and babysitter to Nassar's children Kyle Stephens, far left, addresses Larry Nassar, far right, Tuesday, Jan. 16, 2018, during the first day of the victim impact statements addressing the former sports medicine doctor in Circuit Court Rosemarie Aquilina's courtroom in Lansing, Mich. Nassar made little, if any eye contact. Seated next to Nassar is his attorney Shannon Smith. (Matthew Dae Smith/Lansing State Journal via AP)The fact that Paul Parilla, the chairman of the U.S. Gymnastics board since 2015 who has been involved with the board since 1999, is still associated with the organization is completely unacceptable. Yes, the organization changed presidents, but that is the absolute lowest expectation for the overhaul being demanded by victims.
"You convinced my parents that I was a liar. You are a repulsive liar," testified Kyle Stephens, who was 6 when the abuse from Nassar started. "Little girls don't stay little girls forever. They grow into strong women that return to destroy your world."
And then there is this from three-time gold medalist Aly Raisman:
"I was told [by USA Gymnastics] to be quiet," Raisman told ESPN's Outside the Lines when she first reported Nassar's abuse. "And I think that when somebody in high power is telling you to be quiet, right when they realized you are abused, I think that that is a threat, and especially when their first concern should be to make sure I'm OK, to get information from me, to see if my other teammates were abused, to see what else I knew, to get to the bottom of it."
New USA Gymnastics President Kerry Perry needs to clean house.
If there has been one positive from the ripples of Weinstein and Sandusky and the other serial sexual predators, it has been that the response has resulted in change.
Here's hoping outrage over what has happened to young female athletes will lead to the same meaningful change at USA Gymnastics.
Contact Jay Greeson at jgreeson@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6343.