Pages

26 January 2018

Rosemary Westwood: Larry Nassar trial highlights how we (don't) respond to sexual violence

It took an avalanche. An avalanche of stories over decades. An avalanche of suffering and abuse. More than 150 women and girls — so many the judge and prosecutor debated the exact number — spent six days over the last week telling a courtroom in Michigan of their own personal hells created by sexual abuse disguised as medical treatment at the hands of Larry Nassar, a U.S.A. Gymnastics and Michigan State University doctor whose predation ended Wednesday when a judge sentenced him to 40 to 175 years in prison. “You do not deserve to walk outside a prison again," said Judge Rosemarie Aquilina. That decision was a very long time coming, in a case that exemplifies everything wrong — and entirely commonplace — about how we respond to sexual violence.

http://www.metronews.ca/views/opinion/2018/01/25/westwood-larry-nassar-highlights-respond-sexual-violence.html