The former American Gymnastics Federation doctor, convicted of molesting dozens of female athletes, was stabbed in the neck, back and chest by an inmate. A prison manager: “he is lucky to be alive”
Stabbed in the neck, back and chest by an inmate of the Florida prison where he is serving a sentence of 175 years for molesting and abusing hundreds of young female athletes in her care. Larry Nassarthe “monster of US gymnastics”, has a collapsed lung but is alive and in stable condition after a fight with another inmate. The assault took place on July 9, at Federal Correctional Complex Coleman Penitentiary.
“He’s Lucky to Be Alive”
The doctor was shot ten times, until the guards intervened and saved him from certain death. “He’s lucky to be alive – said a prison officer -. If it weren’t for the staff who were there, he wouldn’t still be among us today”. The FBI is investigating the reasons for the violent brawl. Nassar is in prison along with other sex offenders. “He is in a special unit and he cannot socialize with prisoners convicted of other crimes. He’s been here since 2018 and we’ve never had an accident with him,” explained the manager.
The shock process
Nassar, 59, was convicted in 2018 of sexual assault after a shock trial that saw the testimony of over 160 athletes, many of them minors. Among them also the winners of the Olympic gold medals and stars and stripes gymnastics stars Simone Biles, Aly Raisman e McKayla Maroney. It was they, in 2021 before a Senate commission, who accused the FBI of having made fatal mistakes in an investigation into the doctor’s abuse years earlier, or worse of having covered him up, thus allowing him to continue to molest at least 70 other girls before he was arrested in 2016. In fact, federal agents in the Indianapolis office had received evidence of Nassar’s crimes in 2015 but decided not to stop the harasser.
The $1 billion claim
Biles and her companions asked the agency a settlement of $1 billion in the name of a 1946 law that makes the United States liable” for negligence and omissions of every government employee in their role.” “We have been betrayed by every institution that was supposed to protect us,” Maroney commented at the time, pointing his finger at the American Olympic Committee, the Gymnastics Federation, the Federal Bureau and the Department of Justice, USA Gymnastics after the “Nassar scandal”. kicked out all of its executives and filed for bankruptcy, failing to cope with the hundreds of lawsuits filed by as many women abused by the monster. Michigan University, where the doctor had worked before coming to the Federation, has agreed to pay $500 million in compensation to some of his victims. While the Olympic and Paralympic committees of American gymnastics have reached an agreement with the athletes for 380 million dollars.