By Rachel Denhollander, Op-Ed Contributor, Sunday Review (advance online edition), Jan. 26, 2018<\/p>\n
On Jan. 16, women and girls from across the country began congregating in a courtroom in Lansing, Mich. Some of us were athletes<\/a>; some of us were not. Some of us were white; some of us were black. Some of us were married; some of us were still in high school<\/a>. Many of us had never met.<\/p>\n But we shared one core, unifying experience: sexual assault at the hands of Larry Nassar. And we had one core, unifying goal: facing our abuser and confronting the culture that allowed him to prey on us without fear or punishment.<\/p>\n It felt surreal at first \u2014 finally putting names and faces to the numbered \u201cJane Doe\u201d designations I had wanted for so long to protect. But the pain we shared knit us together instantly. We knew what to do when someone began to weep or shake in court, because each of us had cried those tears before. We knew what to say when a grieving survivor expressed guilt or doubt, because we had experienced that same shame.<\/p>\n Over the course of the trial, we became an army determined to expose the greatest sexual assault scandal in sports history. And we succeeded. After 156 of us gave statements, Judge Rosemarie Aquilina sentenced him on Wednesday to 40 to 175 years.<\/p>\n But on Aug. 29, 2016, when I filed the first police complaint against Larry Nassar for sexually abusing me when I was a 15-year-old girl and chose to release a very public story detailing what he had done, it felt like a shot in the dark<\/a>. I came as prepared as possible: I brought medical journals showing what real pelvic floor technique looks like; my medical records, which showed that Larry had never mentioned that he used such techniques even though he had penetrated me; the names of three pelvic floor experts ready to testify to police that Larry\u2019s treatment was not medical; other records from a nurse practitioner documenting my disclosure of abuse in 2004; my journals from that time; and a letter from a neighboring district attorney vouching for my character. I worried that any less meant I would not be believed \u2014 a concern I later learned was merited.<\/p>\n My education as a lawyer prepared me for the process and presentation<\/a>. But absolutely nothing could have prepared me for the pain of being the first to go public with my accusations in The Indianapolis Star<\/a>.<\/p>\n I lost my church. I lost my closest friends as a result of advocating for survivors who had been victimized by similar institutional failures in my own community.<\/p>\n I lost every shred of privacy.<\/p>\n When a new friend searched my name online or added me as a friend on Facebook, the most intimate details of my life became available long before we had even exchanged phone numbers. I avoided the grocery stores on some days, to make sure my children didn\u2019t see my face on the newspaper or a magazine. I was asked questions about things no one should know when I least wanted to talk.<\/p>\n And the effort it took to move this case forward \u2014 especially as some called me<\/a> an \u201cambulance chaser\u201d just \u201clooking for a payday\u201d \u2014 often felt crushing.<\/p>\n Yet all of it served as a reminder: These were the very cultural dynamics that had allowed Larry Nassar to remain in power.<\/p>\n I knew that the farthest I could run from my abuser, and the people that let him prey on children for decades, was to choose the opposite of what that man, and his enablers, had become. To choose to find and speak the truth, no matter what it cost.<\/p>\n As the calls began coming in to the Michigan State University Police Department and the number of reports grew, my horror did as well. Victim after victim came forward. Some were abused when they were as young as 6 years old. Some were victimized nearly three decades ago, others only days before my report was filed. Far worse, victims began to come forward who had tried to sound the alarm years before I walked into that M.S.U. clinic to meet the celebrated doctor. Not only were they suffering the devastation of sexual assault; they were suffering deep wounds from having been silenced, blamed and often even sent back for continued abuse.<\/p>\n