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Forum nameOkay Sports
Topic subjectFormer MSU coach Kathie Klages needs to go to jail.
Topic URLhttp://board.okayplayer.com/okp.php?az=show_topic&forum=8&topic_id=2638101&mesg_id=2638220
2638220, Former MSU coach Kathie Klages needs to go to jail.
Posted by soulfunk, Wed Jan-17-18 04:22 PM
Here's an article detailing some of the cover up she was involved in 20 years ago there:

http://michiganradio.org/post/day-young-gymnast-tried-tell-msu-about-sexual-abuse

And Larissa Boyce would see him for her lower back pain.

“And there were some trainers in there, and he told them to leave the room,” she says. “And I remember them looking at each other like, this is weird? And he said, ‘It’s ok, she’s a patient of mine at the clinic, too.’ And I remember him taking his gloves off, and he started using his thumb.”

Boyce says Nassar would use his fingers to penetrate her vagina. At first, she says, she squirmed and tried to move away, at least so she wasn’t looking at him directly. But Dr. Nassar told her not to move away, she says.

“It felt very, um, very sexual,” she says, slowly. “Because I mean it started—he was looking right at me. And I think that’s when I tried to scooch away and like turn over, so I didn’t have to look at him.”

Boyce says this penetration happened at first once a week, then every two weeks.

She could tell Dr. Nassar was aroused during those treatments, she says. And he would ask about her sex life with her boyfriend.

After questioning other gymnasts, another girl comes forward, too

Eventually, Boyce says she told her coach, Kathie Klages, that Dr. Nassar was penetrating her during treatment.

“And um, she just couldn’t believe it,” she says. “And said that I must be misunderstanding it, or reading into what he was doing. And I said that I wasn’t.”

Coach Klages at this point had worked alongside Nassar for years. They were close friends. When alums talk about Klages as their stand-in mom, Dr. Nassar is often recalled as part of that same tight-knit gymnastics family: a genuinely nice, avuncular kind of guy who, unlike some of the less sympathetic trainers, made athletes feel like he actually cared about them.

And beyond their friendship, history, and shared mission, Coach Klages also knew having Dr. Nassar, with his Olympic pedigree, was a selling point for recruits.

So with Larissa Boyce still sitting there in her office, Coach Klages started pulling in other members of the youth team, two or three at a time, Boyce says. Asking each of them, in front of Boyce: has anything uncomfortable ever happened with you and Dr. Nassar?

All of them said no. Except for one.

In court filings, one other former gymnast says she told Klages that yes, she too was being penetrated by Nassar during treatment.

“So she kept that girl in the office with me,” Boyce says. “We were both saying we were really embarrassed. And we felt like we were in trouble. And I remember the rest of practice, I think I just went into the bathroom and cried.”

Everyone was looking at her like she was a liar, Boyce says, like she was trying to get attention.

She says after a couple hours of this, Coach Klages called in a few members of the MSU college gymnastics team, too, to talk with Boyce about how medical treatments could somehow get close to private areas, but were never intended as sexual.

“So, when I told them, you know, what was happening, that’s when I remember them looking at each other and walking out and going to talk to Kathie about what I said,” Boyce says.

Michigan Radio reached out to several members of the college team from around this time period. Just two of them got back to us, and neither say they remember this conversation.

Finally, at the end of the day, Boyce says Coach Klages sat down with her for a talk.

“And she was sitting in her office in her chair behind her desk. And said, ‘Well you know, I could file this, but there’s going to be very serious consequences. For you and Dr. Nassar.’ I remember just, like, looking out the window behind her. And um, just not even wanting to look at her," Boyce says.

Deciding that she was the one with a dirty mind—and defending Nassar

Boyce says it felt like the whole youth program knew she’d done something wrong. After that day, she says, the Spartan youth gymnasts were no longer allowed to go down to the trainer’s area, where Dr. Nassar worked.

And Boyce says she wanted more than anything for all the shame and trouble to just be done. So she told herself, you know, maybe I am the problem here.

“What is wrong with me, and why am I thinking what he’s doing is sexual? And this adult that I look up to is saying I’m wrong,” she says.

On top of that, she still wanted to do gymnastics in college.

“And Kathie told my parents I had a chance of that," Boyce says. "And so if she’s telling me I’m wrong, then I had to make myself start believing that, and there was something wrong with me, and I just have a dirty mind.”

Afterwards, when Dr. Nassar confronted Boyce about her complaints, she apologized to him. Boyce recalls leaving gymnastics not long after that, but says she continued to see Dr. Nassar for two more years. And she says the abuse didn’t stop.