Larry Nassar stabbed multiple times in US prison: Who is the disgraced doctor who abused US gymnasts?

Disgraced sports doctor Larry Nassar was stabbed multiple times by another inmate at a federal prison in Florida that is experiencing staffing shortages. According to The Associated Press, Nassar was sentenced to prison after being found guilty of sexually abusing multiple women gymnasts and possession of child pornography. The report says the assault took place on Sunday at United States Penitentiary Coleman in Florida. Before EMS arrived, guards started life-saving procedures right away and kept up their “life-saving efforts,” a Bureau of Prisons official told The Independent. The prisoner was then taken to a nearby hospital for additional care and assessment. Although the extent of his injuries is not yet known, sources told AP that his condition has stabilised. Also read: How the wrestlers’ protest puts the spotlight on rampant sexual abuse in sports in India Who is Larry Nassar? According to Dailymail, Lawrence Gerard, also known as Larry Nassar, was born on 16 August 1983, in Farmington Hills, Michigan. Nassar, who was only 15 years old at the time, worked as a student sports trainer for his school’s women’s gymnastics team, where his brother also worked as an athletic trainer. After completing his education in 1981, he enrolled in the University of Michigan to study kinesiology. He had previously worked for the university’s football and track and field teams before earning his degree in 1985. He received his fellowship in sports medicine in 1997, shortly after beginning his position as USA Gymnastics’ national medical coordinator, which he held until 2014. He had, however, been employed by neighbourhood and collegiate gymnastics groups for almost ten years. Also read: Winter Olympics 2018: Sex abuse trauma centres set up for athletes in the wake of Larry Nassar scandal Why was he arrested? Although some gymnasts assert that they reported Nassar’s behaviour as early as the 1990s, USA Gymnastics didn’t take action against Nassar until 2015 due to allegations of sexual assault, according to Dailymail. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) also failed to take the allegations seriously, allowing Nassar to abuse more than 120 additional victims while they withheld the information for a year and a half. Victims of the scandal revealed that they had confided in adults and coaches about the abuse. The following September, USA Gymnastics completely severed connections with Nassar due to “athlete concerns.” He was also let go by Michigan State University in that same month. While working as the team doctor for several decades, the former doctor preyed on numerous teenage gymnasts, including Olympic champion Simone Biles, Aly Raisman, Gabby Douglas, and McKayla Maroney. They also testified in 2021 before a Senate Judiciary Committee about the abuse and how authorities had failed to hold him accountable for years. 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, as per AP. On 22 November 2016, he was accused of committing three counts of first-degree criminal sexual assault, and it was later discovered that there had been around 50 complaints received throughout the investigation. Nasser was charged with child pornography in a different case in December 2016, and he eventually admitted guilt. His young victims were routinely sexually molested while he pretended to treat hip and leg ailments they had sustained while playing sports. The disgraced physician was charged with 22 further counts of sexual assault in 2017, and more and more victims came forward. He entered a plea of guilty to three counts of first-degree criminal sexual conduct on 29 November 2017. Also read: Kyle Stephens reveals abuse by ex-USA gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar led to her father's suicide How long has Nassar been imprisoned? After being detained in 2016, Nassar entered a guilty plea in December 2017 and was given a 60-year jail term. He was given a 40 to 175-year prison sentence after entering a guilty plea to criminal sexual behaviour at a different trial two months later. For sexual assault in Michigan, he is also presently serving a separate sentence of 40 to 125 years. The serial sex offender has attempted to contest his lengthy conviction while inside, claiming that the judge at his 2018 trial treated him unfairly by calling him a “monster” and saying that he should “wither” in prison like the evil witch in “The Wizard of Oz.” In June 2022, the Michigan Supreme Court dismissed his final appeal. Why did the FBI come under fire? The special agent in charge of the FBI’s Indianapolis office, W Jay Abbott, left the organisation in 2017. He was charged with holding the FBI informed of the first claims US Gymnastics had received about Nassar’s actions for five weeks. After a Michigan State University campus police complaint regarding Nassar was filed, agents took another 17 months to launch an investigation. The bureau’s handling of the situation was criticised in a damning report later issued by the Justice Department watchdog, which said that it allowed the sexual predator to assault dozens more people. Nassar was attacked shortly after being released into the general population after being initially transported to a prison in Tucson, Arizona. After that, officials sent Nassar to his current federal maximum security prison, which is around 90 minutes away from Tampa. How was he attacked? Nassar 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. Further details are awaited. Has there been a staff shortage at the federal prison? 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. An AP investigation in 2021 revealed nearly one-third of federal correctional officer positions were vacant nationwide, forcing prisons to use cooks, teachers, nurses and other workers to guard inmates. The staffing shortages have hampered the response to emergencies at other prisons, including suicides. Other investigations by the news agency have revealed sexual abuse and criminal conduct, among other problems, at the Bureau of Prisons — the Justice Department’s largest agency, with more than 30,000 employees, 158,000 inmates and an annual budget of about $8 billion. The bureau’s new leader, Colette Peters, was brought in last year to reform the crisis-plagued agency. She has vowed to reform archaic hiring practices and bring new transparency. But problems have persisted, as shown by the recent suicide of Ted Kaczynski, known as the “Unabomber,″ at a federal lockup in North Carolina. 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. With inputs from The Associated Press