Michigan State hires law firm to investigate its handling of the Larry Nassar scandal
Michigan State University’s Board of Trustees decided Friday to hire an independent investigator to look into the university’s handling of the Larry Nassar scandal.
The investigation, to be conducted by the law firm of McDermott Will & Emery, will also look at how MSU handles current sexual assault claims on campus, according to MSU spokesperson Emily Guerrant and Nassar survivor Rachael Denhollander.
Denhollander was the first woman to publicly accuse Nassar of sexual abuse, and the last of more than 150 women and girls to confront him in court during his sentencing hearing for criminal sexual conduct.
She worked with MSU in selecting the firm, one she described as “one of the top firms in the world” to deal with this sort of investigation.
Nassar survivors have called for an independent investigation for more than two years, and this one will permit MSU to “look at what went wrong, to span all the departments, and cite their failures and put steps in place to remedy the situation,” Denhollander tells CNN.
“You can’t fix what you haven’t diagnosed,” she said, calling the investigation an opportunity to the university to “find out what happened” and “just say sorry.”
The investigation goes “far beyond” the Michigan attorney general’s current investigation of the university’s handling of Nassar, because “the AG’s investigation is limited to criminality,” she says.
The independent investigation’s scope, timeline, cost and contract are still being negotiated, MSU said in a statement.
In 2017 the Attorney General’s Office began investigating the university, but it wasn’t until January 2018 that the scope and makeup of their probe was announced.
A special prosecutor was appointed to investigate MSU “from the president’s office down” over how Nassar, its former sports physician, could have sexually abused girls and young women for nearly 20 years without university action.
Nassar, the former USA Gymnastics doctor, will likely spend the rest of his life behind bars.
He was sentenced to 60 years in federal prison on child pornography charges and two Michigan state sentences to be served concurrently — 40-175 years in Ingham County and 40-125 years in Eaton County.
More than 150 women and girls said in court that he sexually abused them over the past two decades.
Former MSU President Lou Anna Simon was charged in November with lying to police in the investigation Larry Nassar. It is alleged that she made statements about the Nassar investigation that she knew were false or misleading. She continues to deny these charges.
