US Former Gymnastics Doctor Sentence To 175 Years In Prison For Sexual Assault And Abuse Charges

After seven days of listening to more than 160 girls, women and parents describe the impact of his sexual abuse, disgraced gymnastics physician Larry Nassar turned to the courtroom on Wednesday and quietly attempted an apology, saying, “There are no words that can describe the depth and breadth for how sorry I am for what has occurred.” 

Larry Nassar

Then Judge Rosemarie Aquilina read from a letter Nassar wrote last week in which he expressed very different sentiments. In the letter, Nassar complained about the length of his sentencing hearing, maintained that his touching of patients was legitimate medical therapy and termed some of the alleged victims’ accounts “fabricated.”

“My treatments worked, and those patients that are now speaking out were the same ones that praised me,” Aquilina said as she read Nassar’s words. “. . . The media convinced them that everything I did was wrong and bad. . . . Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.”

Finally, Aquilina delivered her sentence a minimum of 40 years, a maximum of 175 years in a Michigan state prison effectively guaranteeing a life sentence for the 54-year-old former Michigan State University and USA Gymnastics team physician, who also faces a 60-year sentence for federal child pornography crimes.

And with that, the judge brought an end to an extraordinary sentencing hearing that introduced fresh national attention and outrage to a case whose core facts have been well established for nearly a year.