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Steve Penny, former president and CEO of American Gymnastics, was arrested on Wednesday for being accused of falsifying evidence in a Texas sex offender investigation led by Lawrence G. Nassar, the former jailed doctor of the national gymnastics team.
On September 28, a grand jury in Walker County, Texas, charged Penny with ordering the removal of documents from a training center of the county's national team after learning that an investigation had been initiated into Nassar's behavior on the site.
If found guilty, Penny could be sentenced to between two to ten years in prison and a fine of up to $ 10,000, according to a statement from the Walker County Attorney's Office.
The Gymnastics Federation has two general managers since Penny resigned under pressure in March 2017. Both were also forced to leave their positions. The last substitute, Mary Bono, departed from her interim appointment on Tuesday, having held the position less than a week.
The statement, which quotes the indictment, indicates that Penny ordered the removal of the documents "with the aim of harming the ongoing investigation by destroying or hiding the documents". said, but law enforcement officials still have to recover them.
Penny, who lives in a suburb of Indianapolis, was arrested in Tennessee by US marshals and was awaiting extradition to Texas, according to a statement from the district attorney's office.
"Mr. Penny is confident that when all the facts are known, the charges against him will be refuted," said Leigh Robie, one of his lawyers, in a statement.
According to the statement, Penny was on vacation in Tennessee with her family and did not know at all that he had been charged.
"Mr. Penny was arrested when a team of armored marshals suddenly arrived at a holiday cabin while he was sitting with his wife and three children," said the lawyer in a statement. If Mr. Penny had any idea that he was wanted in Texas, that would have been handled properly by a lawyer without terrifying his family. "Mr. Penny did not and would not have tried to avoid the service of the process. "
The training center, known as Karolyi Ranch, belongs to Bela and Martha Karolyi, who are among the most prominent coaches in the history of gymnastics. The ranch is about 60 miles north of Houston, in the Sam Houston National Forest.
In the summer of 2015, at an on-site national team training camp, a coach heard a gymnast say that Nassar had inappropriately touched her during the summer from one of his treatments. Penny was informed that Nassar had been charged with abuse, but the US Gymnastics decided to investigate the case internally and waited five weeks before informing the F.B.I.
Nassar, who has been accused of mistreating hundreds of girls and women, was Sentenced to 40 to 175 years in prison in the case earlier this year.
Many victims of the Nassar national team reported being assaulted during their visits to the ranch training center. That's why the Texas Rangers and the Walker County Sheriff's Office opened their own investigation.
The investigation also culminated in the indictment of Debra Van Horn, coach in sports medicine, charged with sexual assault on a child.
John Manly, a lawyer for many Nassar victims, said of Penny's arrest, "This is a day our customers have been waiting for in years. Larry Nassar molested the girls for 30 years and had facilitators, Steve Penny being among the worst. The families of the 55 children who were assaulted after Mr. Penny admitted that he was aware of the violence in the summer of 2015 are particularly pleased.
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