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The first thing you notice when you walk behind the scenes is the number of people hugging you. The room is teeming with activists, politicians and actresses. Most of them have never met, but they embrace each other like old friends, displaying a level of intimacy rarely met with foreigners in mixed company. In one corner, Jane Fonda, who wears olive pants with a Time & # 39; s Up pin, chats with two young organizers; Valerie Jarrett, former senior adviser to President Barack Obama, is holding the court down the hall. In the middle of the frenzy of the conference, called The United States of Women, I need a minute to find Aly Raisman, who is sitting in a folding chair near the back of the room, in full conversation.
She speaks with Tiffany Thomas Lopez. Like Raisman, who barely measures 5 feet, Thomas Lopez is small and strong, radiating coiled energy. Otherwise, they are very different. Raisman, 24, has won several gold medals by competing in two Olympics; She now lives with her parents outside of Boston and flew to Los Angeles for this event. Thomas Lopez, who played softball for two years at Michigan State before leaving the program and returning to California, is 37 and married. Their paths would probably not have crossed if they did not share the deep and terrible connection of having been sexually abused by Larry Nassar, the former US Gymnastics doctor and the Michigan, who was sentenced in January to 175 years in prison for assaulting hundreds of people.
"I know I am one of the few to be heard, so I just want to do good by people."
Aly Raisman
Raisman, whose straight-line posture betrays his years of training, sits with her legs crossed, her eyes narrowed as Thomas Lopez tell his story. The former softball player arrived at Michigan State in 1998 and saw Nassar for the first time that year. Raisman is doing the mental calculations on her age at that time, then she looks at me and shakes her head. "I was 4. Jordyn [Wieber] was 3 years old," she says later. "We should never have met him."
Wieber, her teammate at the 2012 Olympics, stands just steps away from Jeanette Antolin, another former elite gymnast (and another survivor of Nassar). In a few minutes, the four women will go on stage, present themselves to a thousand people and talk about their abuses. For Raisman, such work – and it's hard work, hard work and exhausting that exhausts his physical and emotional resources – is now a routine. In recent months, she has traveled across the country, giving interviews and speaking at university campuses and conferences such as this one. She listens and shakes hands and poses for photos, smiling smugly as she tears the points of her wounds. She tells what happened, then tells us what she wants to do next.
While Raisman is younger than most speakers in the event, she gives off a level of calm that can be inscribed as stoicism. When she speaks, her voice is smooth and steady like a drumbeat, building only when she wants it. But Thomas Lopez seems anxious. She takes out a pen and scribbles in purple ink on her notes, then shuffles the cards. His hands are shaking. Raisman reaches out, supporting Thomas Lopez's arm, and stares at her. "You are heard now," she said.
When the two women start walking towards the stage, Thomas Lopez practices one of his lines, and Raisman nods. "Do it slowly, so people can be horrified," she says. She pauses and then adds, "Because they should be."
ON THE COURSE of seven days in January, 156 women testified in an audience hall of Lansing, Michigan, telling a judge – and, by power of attorney, the world – how Nassar had mistreated them. Survivors like former gymnast Rachael Denhollander, the first woman to publicly accuse the doctor of sexual misconduct in 2016, and Jamie Dantzscher, a gymnast from the 2000 Olympic team, spoke to Nassar about the way he penetrated their bodies, use the disguise of medical treatment as a blanket. Raisman did not intend to attend. But after seeing Kyle Stephens, whose family was friends with Nassar, testify that her parents did not believe her when she told them what he had done to her when she was a kid, Raisman booked a flight to Michigan the next day. 19659003] His statement began slowly. Raisman walked to the podium, smiled at the judge, spelled out his name, then stood on his heels for a moment, stabilizing his face. (She often did the same expression in front of her floor routine, just before the music came on.) Her hair was pulled into a high ponytail, and she wore a pink blazer that matched her blush. and his lipstick; "Larry," she said, reading on a piece of paper, "you now realize that we, this group of women you've been so mistreated for so long, are now a force" – she paused and looked up, then turned and faced Nassar, looking at him the way a person could look down at his shoe after realizing that she had stepped on a piece of gum – " you are only nothing. "
The video went viral – how could that be?" Raisman channeled an emotion that female celebrities are rarely allowed or encouraged to display: rage A raw, unfiltered, incandescent rage, the kind of uncomfortable rage to watch, as images of a crime scene.The women were exalted.They shared the speech online and posted clips and painted quotes on panels, some of which were seen by Raisman afterwards When she realized how many women could relate to her story – how many women understood her story because it had happened to them too – she was moved. "That was fine ", she says, before correcting herself." Not nice – I want to use the word "nice" wisely, because it's horrible, but to have so much support, and to know that you're not good. you're not alone … "she's moving away a bit." Because parfo is, you feel lonely. "
Raisman is sitting in a studio not far from her parents' home in the Boston suburbs in a dress, patiently waiting for a stylist to curl her hair before it's over. a photographer does not take his picture for this story. Raisman first told reporters in November that she had been abused; at that time, a number of women had already come forward. But despite the huge number of survivors – so far, the Nassar scandal is the largest case of sexual abuse in the history of American sport – history has not attracted the ## 147 ## # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # 39, general attention until the hearing this year. "There were a lot of gymnasts who had spoken before the sentence, but not everyone understood it," says Raisman. "I have the impression that the media did not really understand it."
After Lansing, people understood – sort of. While history has finally shaken the national consciousness, the complexity of the scandal has made it difficult for the public to understand. For many, the easiest way to take into account such a disaster is to focus on the wickedness of the abuser, so that when he is finally purged of society, his ouster gives the story a natural end. at home as the survivors gave their testimony. But that's not what Raisman wanted when she spoke in court that day. She began her statement by expanding her abuser, but she finished by pointing a blowtorch at every institution that allowed her, including USA Gymnastics and the US Olympic Committee. "I think a lot of people do not understand that it's much bigger than Larry Nassar," she says. It flourished during decades If someone prospered for decades, there are people who knew it and who did nothing.There were so many people who left us fall. "
Some of these people were pushed out." When Steve Penny was President and CEO of USAG, the organization waited five weeks by conducting his own investigation before reporting the abuse. from Nassar to the FBI, he resigned in March 2017, about a month after Dantzscher, Antolin and gymnast Jessica Howard spoke of their abuse on "60 Minutes." (Penny reportedly received a severance pay of about 1 Million Dollars.) Lou Anna K. Simon, President of Michigan State, who has agreed to pay $ 500 million to victims of Nassar in settlement, has resigned .But there are still adults who have not been held responsible, says Raisman, whose inclination to hold the feet of his transgressors at the fire recalls the reality of Arya Stark. At the senatorial hearing postponed in June, it was revealed that more than a dozen members of the USAG were aware of the allegations against Nassar before the USAG surrendered to the authorities on July 27, 2015 ("which is absolutely disgusting," says Raisman). None of them alerted the police.
The USOC hired a law firm to investigate what happened, but by mid-July, no details were forthcoming. had appeared. While the USAG has formed a task force of athletes, Raisman – who, like many Nassar victims, has filed a civil suit against him, USAG and USOC – says that He was not asked to participate. (A spokesman for the USAG said in an email that the working group will develop in the coming months, adding, "We hope that once the legal situation is resolved, Ms. Raisman and D & # 39; 39, other athlete survivors will want to associate with USA Gymnastics on our way ")
Raisman is skeptical about the investigation commissioned by the USOC. 39, an independent investigation, "she said." If anyone knew Nassar or should have known it, they must be gone. "
Whenever Raisman insists on responsibility, she deliberately uses these words: should have known Nassar had innumerable facilitators, the majority of whom probably had no idea, or did not want to know, what he was doing behind closed doors. their inability to notice how he prepared the targets, says Raisman, is what created a tragedy In March, she launched a campaign called Flip the Switch, in partnership with the non-profit organization Darkness to Light to offer online courses that allow adults to spot signs of abuse.
Raisman, who signs a certificate and counts up to now), knows many of these signals from the experience. For example, she says, Nassar took "obsessive photos" of the girls that he treated, which should have been about other adults. When gymnasts traveled abroad for tournaments, he treated them at night, sometimes without supervision. "He came to our rooms and worked alone on us – literally on our beds," she says, disgust creeping into her voice. "When I look back, it's a red flag."
Raisman 's first meeting with the doctor was held abroad, when she went to Australia to participate at the age of 15. she in her room, and while the massage left her uncomfortable, she was too intimidated to express her concern. "I always thought it was weird, and it pissed me off and it definitely made me feel uncomfortable, but I felt almost guilty – as if I was the problem, "she says. That's only in 2015, when Penny sent an investigator home to interrogate her about Nassar (USAG was warned by a coach who had heard a conversation about Nassar between gymnast Maggie Nichols and another teammate), that she realized what she had
"I sat thinking about it all night," she wrote in her memoir, "Fierce," published the # 39, last year. "It was as if a cork had been lifted in my head, and memories were returning day by day: Larry Hotel Rooms And after, the treats that he gave us These little treats that planted the idea that he was looking out for us Oh my god. After the meeting, Raisman called an officer of the USAG and asked to speak again to the investigators. A few hours later, she writes, she received a text message from someone (she does not reveal the identity of the text in the book) who told her to stop talking.
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