January 24, 2018

Larry Nassar Sentenced to Up to 175 Years in Prison for Sexual Abuse

“I just signed your death warrant.”

Larry Nassar, the former doctor for USA Gymnastics who pled guilty to multiple counts of sexual assault and child pornography, has been sentenced to between 40 to 175 years in prison. The sentencing on Wednesday comes after seven days of often-wrenching testimony in a Michigan courtroom by 156 of his victims, most of them current and former gymnasts, who described sexual abuse while under his medical care.

“As much as it was my honor and privilege to hear the sister survivors, it is my honor and privilege to sentence you,” Judge Rosemarie Aquilina said. “Because sir, you do not deserve to walk outside of a prison ever again.”

“Sir, I am giving you 175 years which is 2,100 months,” she continued. “I just signed your death warrant.”

Shortly before the sentencing, Aquilina read aloud excerpts from a letter Nassar had sent to the court last week, in which the disgraced physician defended his practices as medical, not sexual.

“I was a good doctor because my treatments worked, and those patients that are now speaking out are the same ones that praised and came back over and over, and referred family and friends to see me,” the letter read. “The media convinced them that everything I did was wrong and bad. They feel I broke their trust. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.”

 Aquilina’s reading of Nassar’s statement prompted audible gasps throughout the courtroom.

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