Nassar Sentencing: Gymnasts, Students Want MSU President Gone

LANSING, MI – As the sentencing hearing for former Michigan State sports medicine doctor Larry Nassar enters its fourth day, focus has been turning to others who may share in some of the culpability of his sexual assaults on young women and girls. Michigan State President Lou Anna Simon is at the top of the list.

Through the first three days of victims statements during Nassar's sentencing hearing, many young women included Simon in their comments, condemning her and other university staff for not acknowledging and even denying their complaints about Nassar's abuse.

Some 140 young women and girls have reported that Nassar, who also worked as a team doctor for USA Gymnastics, sexually abused them during medical examinations. Of them, more than 100 were expected to testify this week in the sentencing phase of his trial after he pleaded guilty last fall to sexual abuse of his patients.

Gymnast Lindsey Lemke provided an emotional rebuke of Simon during testimony on Thursday. She lambasted not only Simon and Nassar, but also former Michigan State gymnastics coach Kathie Klages and John Geddert, the owner of the Lansing-area gymnastics club where many of the women and girls said that Nassar's abuse took place. Lemke said it's too late for apologies.

To Simon, Lemke said, "You are hardly a president of any kind ... You are trying to manipulate people that you are innocent when you are not. As far as I'm concerned, you are just as bad as this monster that has attempted to ruin all of us. But, he hasn't and you won't either."

Earlier this week, outside of the sentencing hearing, Simon defended her actions, saying that she had been informed of a Title IX violation and that a police report had been filed against an unidentified physician at the university, and told staff "play it straight up." She, however, declined to give specific responses to women's claims that university staff did not act appropriately when it received complaints about Nassar.

On Friday, an editorial published in The Detroit News has called for Simon to resign or be fired by the Michigan State, writing that "Simon has not played it straight herself, choosing instead to pull a curtain over questions of culpability by university officials in the serial molestation of young girls and women at the hands of Dr. Larry Nassar."

The editorial goes on to say that Simon has lost credibility among stakeholders of the university.

Simon is not complicit in enabling Nassar’s horrors — it’s hard to know what she knew and when she knew it. But she should be held responsible for bottling up the investigation into who at MSU may be culpable in brushing aside complaints and allowing his abuses to continue.

Meanwhile, the university board of trustees was to hold a special meeting this morning to discuss the Nassar hearing, according to a report in the Detroit Free Press. The report indicated that it is not clear whether discussion will get into Simon's future at the university. A report by the Free Press indicated that the trustees have requested state Attorney General Bill Schuette's office to review the university's handling of the Nassar investigation.

On Thursday, the university's student government issued a statement that it had called for a change "at the highest level." According to a report by the Free Press, that implied that the student body wants Simon removed.

On Friday, more young women are lining up to testify during the sentencing hearing, Initially, that hearing was to conclude and he was to be sentenced, though Ingham County Circuit Judge Rosemarie Aquilina has pushed the actual sentencing off until early next week, to allow more time for women to testify before her.

Nassar in November pleaded guilty to molesting females with his hands at his Michigan State University office, his home and a Lansing-area gymnastics club, often while their parents were in the room. He also worked for Indianapolis-based USA Gymnastics, which trains Olympians.

Prosecutors are seeking at least 40 years in prison for Nassar, who has already been sentenced to 60 years in federal prison for child pornography crimes.

Watch the live stream of the sentencing hearing below:

File photo by the Associated Press