After decades of sexual abuse at the hands of former U.S. women’s national gymnastics team doctor Larry Nassar, more than 500 survivors will finally be compensated by U.S.A. Gymnastics and the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee (USOPC) to the amount of $380 million. The settlement, which was reached on Monday during U.S.A. Gymnastics’ bankruptcy proceedings in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Indiana, is among the largest ever of its kind.
“No amount of money will ever repair the damage that has been done and what these women have been through,” Nassar survivor Rachael Denhollander told The New York Times. “But at some point, the negotiations have to end because these women need help—and they need it right now.” Insurers of U.S.A. Gymnastics and the USOPC will pay the bulk of the $380 million settlement, but the USOPC will pay roughly $34 million of its own money to Nassar’s survivors.
Nassar’s abuse was first brought to light in 2016 when Denhollander publicly said he’d assaulted her, and in September gymnasts including Simone Biles, McKayla Maroney, Aly Raisman, and Maggie Nichols testified before Congress about what Nassar had put them through and how they felt the FBI had failed them in its initial investigation. Nassar pleaded guilty to charges of child pornography, tampering with evidence, and sexual assault of minors in 2017 and 2018 and is currently serving a sentence of de facto life imprisonment without parole.
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This article originally appeared on Vogue.
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Source: SELF
