EAST LANSING, Mich. — Four miles away and seven years ago, Rachael Denhollander walked into the Ingraham County Courthouse in downtown Lansing for the first day for the sentencing hearing for serial sexual predator Larry Nassar.
Denhollander would be one of more than 150 survivors who would provide impact statements.
Not present in the courtroom that day: anyone from Michigan State University, where Nassar had spent more than two decades working as a doctor in the sports medicine department, abusing patients on a near daily basis in addition to his acts with USA Gymnastics.
The lack of school representation — then-president Lou Anna K. Simon, for example, or anyone from the board of trustees — served as a stark reminder of how MSU viewed the case. (Simon, after a media furor, would attend a single day of the nearly two-week proceedings.)
Rather than being moved to action by women who spoke through tears but shined through truth, the school seemed to view the Nassar case in more blunt, bottom-line ways — exposure and lawyers, settlements and public relations.
Then came Thursday morning, when Denhollander, alongside fellow survivors Sterling Riethman and Trinea Gonczar, sat next to MSU president Kevin Guskiewicz and announced the formation of a new collaborative advisory board to help guide an institutional assessment and responsive action to sexual violence.
What had long been an adversarial relationship between the school and survivors was suddenly aligned, as together they embarked on assessing policies, culture and institutional structure to make MSU and the community at large safer.
“For me to be here, and for it to be collaborative, is an incredibly powerful thing to experience,” Denhollander said.
Denhollander, Riethman and Gonczar first presented MSU with this plan in 2018, but the then-board of trustees declined to even vote on it, let alone implement it. Though the school changed numerous policies on its own, settled over $500 million in cases and offered numerous public apologies, it wasn’t until Guskiewicz was hired 14 months ago that reengagement became possible.
Rather than view the Nassar case as old news, he sought out survivors to assess what could still be done.
“I listened,” Guskiewicz said. “One of the things I was very interested in learning about is how the institution has been supportive and responsive to the survivor community. This is a game-changer for Michigan State as we learn from the past and move forward … this is a much better place than six to seven years ago, or 12 years ago, but there is always room for improvement.”
It is a stark juxtaposition from those tense, emotional days of the Nassar sentencing hearings. Judge Rosemarie E. Aquilina invited any and all victims to address the court.
It wasn’t really about how long a sentence she would give Nassar — the now-61-year-old was already imprisoned on a federal child pornography conviction that runs through 2068. Aquilina would then add 175 years on state charges. He isn’t, and never was, getting out.
It was about every victim getting their chance to tell their story, to address Nassar directly, to find a measure of peace and purpose through the process. It was part group therapy session, part teaching moment and part warning call to the individuals and institutions that through hollow policies and blind eyes, housed and even protected Nassar during his reign of terror.
Places such as MSU.
“The world needs to hear this,” Aquilina said.
A case that had attracted moderate attention quickly exploded into the American consciousness as woman after woman formed an unignorable parade of both pain and power. They spoke of abuse. Of rage. Of lost innocence. Of forever fallout.
And also of determination, of hope, of strength, of recovery.
Gold medal gymnasts talked about being targeted at national camps and Olympic competitions. Locals described being innocently driven to the doctor — often in the backseat of their mom’s car because they were so young — to get treatment for an injury sustained tumbling or flipping during their favorite after-school activity.
Videos arrived from as far away as Asia. Brothers read statements for sisters who couldn’t manage. Husbands stood behind their wives, hands on their shaking shoulders. Friends hugged. Anger rose. Sadness hung over everything.
A mother, Donna Markham, spoke of the suicide of her daughter, Chelsea. “It all started with him,” she said, acknowledging Nassar. A daughter, Kyle Stephens, spoke of the suicide of her father, who couldn’t get past what she called the “shame and self-loathing” of not believing her when she first revealed what happened years ago.
To sit in that courtroom, day after day, nightmare after nightmare, was to be profoundly moved.
And yet, Michigan State was almost nowhere to be found. The hearing was just a few minutes from campus, yet the divide seemed massive, further infuriating victims.
It continued through the years. The school sought out meaningful reform, but kept survivors at a distance. At one point, one survivor, Kaylee Lorincz, then 18 but who was just 13 when Nassar victimized her, ran into then-interim MSU president John Engler on campus. She asked to talk. “My hope was if he actually met a survivor he would be more empathetic,” Lorincz said during a 2018 board of trustees meeting. Instead, Engler tried to negotiate with her, she said. “Mr. Engler … looked directly at me and asked, ‘Right now, if I wrote you a check for $250,000, would you take it?’ When I explained that it’s not about the money for me and that I just want to help, he said, ‘Well, give me a number.'”
That’s all it ever felt like for MSU — a number that would lead to closure, or at least fading public memories. It was always about the school; never enough about everyone else. Denhollander and Riethman said there is nothing new about what was announced Thursday from what they proposed in 2018 — just fresh leadership.
“This kind of institutional courage is rare,” Denhollander said.
Finally, survivors would be welcome at the table. Even better, they are being seen for more than just what happened to them – each is now an expert and professional in the field.
“We are stronger together,” Gonczar noted.
The work of the advisory panel is just beginning. This isn’t an investigation, Guskiewicz notes, but an assessment. What will be found and what can be improved remain to be seen.
All these years later, though, it’s a new day and a new relationship for Michigan State and the Nassar survivors it once couldn’t be bothered to bear witness.
“It’s never too late,” Denhollander said, “to do the right thing.”
