McKayla Maroney Denounces FBI Coverup of Larry Nassar Sexual Assault

Larry Nassar: Why Didn’t The Parents Catch Him?

After Rachael’s story came out in September 2016, police started getting more complaints about Larry.

Within two weeks, another 16 women and girls had come forward.

By November, Larry was charged with sexually abusing a child under the age of 13.

Even then, many wondered: How could the parents of these girls have been in the room while Larry abused their child – and not know it was happening?

For their part, the parents are asking themselves the same question.

They’ve seen all the comments online: how the parents are to blame; how they must have been so obsessed with their kids’ gymnastics careers that they just looked the other way.

And the moment Rachael Denhollander spoke out publicly about her abuse, their lives changed, too. Suzanne Thomashow remembers showing her daughter, Jessica, the IndyStar article. Suzanne remembers Jessica reading it and then saying, “Mom, that’s what he did to me.”

Suzanne says, “That was when we figured it out. That was when she figured out that she’d been assaulted.”

Larry Nassar: How He Got Caught (Believe Podcast)

For anyone who’s followed the Nassar case, Rachael Denhollander’s face is a familiar one.

For Larry Nassar, the beginning of the end comes in the summer of 2016, thanks to three things:

  1. a tough police detective,
  2. a dedicated team of journalists in Indiana, and
  3. a homeschooling mom from Kentucky.

That mom is Rachael Denhollander. She’s also a lawyer and a devout Christian.

If you’ve seen coverage of the Larry Nassar case, Rachael’s face is probably a familiar one.

Back in the summer of 2016, an article on Facebook caught her eye.

“I don’t think I’ll ever forget seeing the article come through,” she says.

It was this big investigation in The Indianapolis Star about how USA Gymnastics had been covering up complaints of sexual abuse against coaches — coaches who were able to move from gym to gym, abusing kids.

Rachael had been waiting for that moment for 16 years.

Because Rachael had also been abused — not by a coach, but by Dr. Larry Nassar, back in 2000 when she was a high school gymnast.

Larry Nassar: How He Got Away (Believe Podcast)

Larry was not licensed to treat the Pelvic Floor, but he used his version of it to treat all sorts of issues.

Larry used a 25-slide power point of different techniques to justify what he did.

He intimidated and manipulated the investigators, who did not verify his techniques with other experts or check it with the area prosecutor.  An area prosecutor would have been aware of other complaints.

Main Content

It’s late on a fall evening. Dark. September 16th, 2004.

A 17-year-old girl walks towards the bright lights of a hospital in Lansing, Michigan.

She’s with her mom and a police officer.

Brianne Randall-Gay has just come from the police station, where she reported what Dr. Larry Nassar did to her during an appointment earlier that day — how she went to see him for help with her scoliosis, and how he used gloveless hands to massage her breasts and vagina.

The police take her straight to the local hospital for a rape exam.

Brianne remembers the emergency room being packed. But the police escort means she skips the line. Goes right back into an exam room.

The nurse gives her a pelvic exam and also asks a lot of personal questions.

“I do remember telling the nurse, saying to her, you know, ‘what if no one believes me? What if everyone thinks I’m lying?'” recalls Brianne. “And she said, ‘you know, people who are lying about this don’t have the details like you have. And this man’s going to lose his license.’ And I remember – it’s so weird to me now – but I remember feeling so guilty after … I even think I told her something like, I don’t want that to happen. Thinking I made a mistake and feeling guilty for ever reporting him.”

The next step is for the police to question Dr. Larry Nassar.

But it takes about two weeks for a detective named Andrew McCready to sit down with him for an interview.

McCready still works for Meridian Township’s police department, the township where Brianne’s appointment was.

McCready wouldn’t be interviewed for this podcast, and there are no tapes of his interview with Larry.

What we have, however, is the written police report from 2004 (Note: Contains images that will be disturbing to many readers) where Larry lays out his defense. It consists of two things: an explanation claiming that what he did to Brianne was legitimate medical treatment, and a PowerPoint. It’s one of several presentations Larry created for speaking engagements and lectures he gave at medical conferences. And, apparently, to defend himself.

Left: Brianne Randall-Gay in 2004. Right: Brianne Randall-Gay now.

Kasey O’Dea/Michigan Radio

“Yeah, it is, it’s one of the many things I think that made…that fooled the officer,” said Meridian Township Police Chief, Ken Plaga.

Plaga wasn’t chief back in 2004. But he has reviewed Brianne’s case. And he says, look, you’ve got a doctor at the top of his field, explaining this complex medical procedure, providing evidence.

“I think that, you know, you bring in this PowerPoint with demonstrations of the actual procedure that are part of that PowerPoint where you see the hands inside the groin area. Similar to what was explained by the victim by Brianne, by several of the victims. You know, ‘here it is, I teach this.'”

This was one of Larry’s moves: create confusion; blur the lines between his abuse and legitimate medical techniques.

Larry would treat patients who had injuries like a heel fracture or a shoulder sprain, with his so called “pelvic manipulations.” He wasn’t even certified to treat the pelvic floor. But your average patient may not know any of this.

Brianne Randall-Gay saw that PowerPoint for the first time this year.

“The PowerPoint is cringe worthy. It was really difficult to see,” she says.

“And what, you know, made me angry is that what I told them he did is not what he presented to them in the PowerPoint. He’s like on the side of their shorts, he’s not trying to penetrate them, he’s not massaging their breast. He’s doing none of that. So I feel like that PowerPoint, you know, it didn’t prove anything.”

Police Chief Ken Plaga admits there are at least two ways his department messed this case up.

One is, even though Larry was the suspect, the detective didn’t run his explanation or his PowerPoint by any other medical expert. They just took his word for it.

And second, the detective never brought the case to the local prosecutor for review.

Prosecutors see cases from all over the county — not just one town. So they would know, for instance, if multiple people have come forward about the same sports doctor.

But with Brianne’s complaint, that didn’t happen. And Larry went back to work.