An Open Letter to Larry Nassar
Dr. Larry Nassar was sentenced to 40-150 years in prison for his role in one of the worst cases of sexual abuse in United States history.
February 8, 2018
Dear Larry Nassar, you sad excuse for a physician:
Perhaps in the next 40-150 years you’ll find the time to read this, and maybe you’ll find solace from behind bars knowing your name is still in the media. Then again, considering you did your best to keep your crude “treatments” carefully under lock and key, maybe you won’t.
These are not women scorned; these are women scarred.
The revelation of your acts of misconduct came all too late to the light of the world. In an ideal place, you wouldn’t have had the opportunity to sexually abuse young female athletes and patients, but I guess in an ideal place there wouldn’t be people like you to begin with.
In your poor attempt of a letter to Judge Aquilina, who presided over your case, you quoted Shakespeare saying, “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.” This is the focus of my letter to you. Let’s be clear here Mr. Nassar: These girls, these women, these Olympians, all 150+ of them, in no way, shape, or form wanted your “treatments”. If anything, they left your office with more problems than they came in with. These young women came to you in need of relief, only to receive more unease in the form of sexual misconduct. These are not women scorned; these are women scarred.
Larry, because of your secret perversion, you have not only robbed every affected family member of their duty to their daughters, but you managed to take away the innocence of countless youth as well. It is a parent’s duty to protect their children, and yet no mother or father had the slightest clue that they would have to be weary of trusting a doctor with their children. And in some cases, you assaulted these girls with their parents in the room.
To know that your name was clean for so long, to know that you continued abusing young women and children for decades, to know there are more people out there like you, all of these things remind me of how closely I will have to watch my children someday. Because of you, parents across the nation will increase their awareness of what people in positions of power can use their power for.
The day of your sentencing, little girls everywhere were held a little tighter.
Oh Larry, I pray for people as sick as you, but moreover, I pray for those who have been the victim, for those who are survivors. Mr. Nassar, you are both a symptom and the sickness of sexual abuse itself. The effects of behavior like yours have stripped women of their voices for generations, but finally it has been put to rest. Women have spoken up, and the difficult conversations have been had, all in order to prevent more predators like you from walking the same floors as our youth. The only joy I find in this entire case is that justice has been served to women everywhere, and you have a lifetime to dwell on it.
