Nassar Attorney Says She Doubts So Many Women Were Victimized

DETROIT, MI – Attorney Shannon Smith, who represented convicted molester Larry Nassar, said she has doubts that he sexually abused all the girls and young women that testified during this sentencing hearing last week. Smith went as far as to say the doctor's treatments were legitimate.

Her comments were made during an interview with Fox2Detroit, and come as Nassar faces additional victims in another sentencing hearing taking place this week in Eaton County.

Last week, Nassar was sentenced in Ingham County to up to 175 years in prison at the end of a seven-day sentencing hearing when more than 150 girls and young women provided victim impact statements.

Many of the victims tearfully described how he molested them under the guise of medical treatment, sometimes while their own parents were in the exam room. Some women said they went to Nassar, who worked for USA Gymnastics and Michigan State University as a sports medicine doctor, on the recommendation of coaches and trainers. Some of the victims also said they had not realized until later that they had been molested by him.

In her interview with Fox2, Smith says:

There were girls who had perfectly normal lives, who never questioned the medical treatment done by Larry Nassar - and there is a legit medical treatment that involves touching sensitive areas and even penetration - that I think have now come to believe they were victimized and have almost become victimized by our process.

More and more people were coming forward thinking, 'I was fine my whole life, and now, all of a sudden I realize I was a survivor.' I think that's really sad. I have a very hard time believing my client could have even possibly assaulted that many people, day in and day out, in front of their parents and every single one of those things was a crime, but he was such a manipulator he got away with it.

Some of those girls, to be quite frank, it was very obvious they didn't even know what to think because they never felt victimized. He was never inappropriate to them and because of everything they've seen, they feel like they just must have been victimized and I think that's really unfortunate.

Smith goes on to defend Nassar's treatment as legitimate, saying that he was performing "myofascial release," an alternative medical therapy to relax muscle tissue.

Between the cases in Ingham and Eaton counties, 265 women and girls have said they were assaulted by Nassar. In addition to his sentence last week of 40 to 175 years in prison, he previously was sentenced to 60 years in federal prison on pornography charges.

>>> Read the full interview at Fox2Detroit

File photo by Carlos Osorio/Associated Press