Nassar stabbed multiple times at federal prison | News, Sports, Jobs
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Disgraced sports doctor Larry Nassar, who was convicted of sexually abusing Olympic and college female gymnasts, was stabbed multiple times by another inmate at a federal prison in Florida that is experiencing staffing shortages.
The attack happened Sunday at United States Penitentiary Coleman, and Nassar was in stable condition on Monday, two people familiar with the matter told The Associated Press.
One of the people said Nassar had been stabbed in the back and in the chest. The two officers guarding the unit where Nassar was held were working mandated overtime shifts because of staffing shortages, one of the people said.
The people were not authorized to publicly discuss details of the attack or the ongoing investigation and spoke to the AP on the condition of anonymity.
Nassar is serving decades in prison for convictions in state and federal courts. He admitted sexually assaulting athletes when he worked at Michigan State University and at Indianapolis-based USA Gymnastics, which trains Olympians. Nassar also pleaded guilty in a separate case to possessing images of child sexual abuse.
The federal Bureau of Prisons has experienced significant staffing shortages in the last few years, an issue thrust into the spotlight in 2019 when the convicted financier Jeffrey Epstein took his own life at a federal jail in New York.
On Sunday, one of the officers in Nassar’s unit was working a third straight day of overtime, each of them a 16-hour shift, one of the people familiar with the matter said. The other officer was on a second straight day of mandated overtime, the person said.
Rachael Denhollander, the first woman to publicly accuse Nassar, tweeted Monday that none of the women she spoke with are rejoicing that Nassar was attacked. “We’re grieving the reality that protecting others from him came with the near-certainty we would wake up to this someday.”
Another victim, Sarah Klein, said the stabbing forces her and others to relive their abuse and trauma “at the hands of Nassar and the institutions, including law enforcement, that protected him and allowed him to prey on children.”
“I want him to face the severe prison sentence he received because of the voices of survivors. I absolutely do not support violence because it’s morally wrong and death would be an easy out for Nassar,” Klein said an emailed statement.
More than 150 women and girls testified during the 2018 sentencing of Nassar, who molested athletes under the guise of medical treatment. Some of them testified that — over the course of more than two decades of sexual abuse — they had told adults, including coaches and athletic trainers, what was happening but that it went unreported.
More than 100 women, including Olympic gold medalist Simone Biles, collectively are seeking more than $1 billion from the federal government for the FBI’s failure to stop Nassar after agents became aware of allegations against him in 2015. He was arrested by Michigan State University police in 2016, more than a year later.
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