The Detroit News has some tough words for Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette’s lack of action investigating Michigan State University in a horrendous sexual assault scandal involving dozens of young girls.
The girls were victimized by Dr. Larry Nassar, an MSU sports medicine Doctor, for years. Nassar was sentenced to more than 25 years in prison this week for the assaults. Nassar was previously sentenced for thousands of pictures and videos of child porn, he will spend the rest of his life behind bars.
The Detroit News blasted Schuette’s failure to look into what role college administrators and other MSU employees knew about Nassar’s depravity, but refused to act.
According to the Detroit News:
“The News’ reporting identified 14 MSU staffers who in some fashion were made aware of the girls’ complaints, but either did not act, or acted instead to protect Nassar.
The group includes Simon, who was briefed about a 2014 Title IX complaint against Nassar, but allowed him to keep seeing the patients referred to him by the MSU gymnastics program for another nearly two years. How many young women might have been spared had Simon suspended Nassar pending the outcome of the investigation?
That’s one of the many questions Attorney General Bill Schuette should ask. But he seems curiously uninterested in determining who knew what and when inside the MSU administration and athletic and osteopathic medicine programs.
Schuette’s indifference borders on dereliction of duty, the same charge he leveled against state workers who failed to act to protect citizens in the Flint water crisis. How is the Michigan State case different? And how does it differ from Penn State University, where a university president, vice president and athletic director were criminally convicted for not protecting boys from abuse on their campus by a former assistant football coach?
Schuette, who is running for governor, must step beyond any political calculations and do his job before he can make a legitimate claim to the next one he seeks.”
