Everyone Believed Larry Nassar

I - Larissa Boyce was 10 when her coach, John Geddert,forced her legs into a split so hard she cried. He pulled her right leg up toward his torso, sending shooting pains through her groin and hamstrings, and he kept pulling. “Racking,” as it’s called, was common practice at the gym, but it was evidently too much for Larissa’s mother, whomarched onto the mats and told Geddert to take his handsoff her daughter. From then on, Larissa would train under Kathie Klages, a relatively low-key coach with unruly red hair and glasses at Michigan State University’s Spartan youth gymnastics team. Klages, like Geddert, considered herself a dear friend of an athletic trainernamed Larry Nassar and sent her gymnasts to him. ¶ When, six years later, Larissa felt ready to talk about the fact that Larry had penetrated her with his hand without warning, she approachedKlages. Larissa remembers her office as a small room with a desk, a window, and green carpet. “ ‘I have known Larry for years and years,’ ” Larissa recalls Klages saying. “ ‘He would never do anything inappropriate.’ ”

- Kerry Howley

Larissa named another gymnast who had been touched, and when Klages called her into the office, she told her the same story. Klages countered by bringing in college gymnasts, who said that Larry had touched “around” the area but that it was never “inappropriate.”

“That’s not what happened to me,” Larissa said. Klages, who has been indicted for allegedly lying to police about this and another such instance, maintains that no one ever came to her with complaints of sexual abuse.

According to Larissa, Klages said she could report the allegations but doing so would have “very serious consequences” for both Larry and Larissa. Larissa couldn’t look at Klages, so she stared out the window. She didn’t want to get anyone in trouble. Afterward, she cried in the bathroom and resolved never to tell anyone again. She worried that Klages would tell Larry.

The next time she went to visit Larry, he closed the door, pulled up a stool, sat down, and looked at her. “So,” he said, “I talked to Kathie.”

“I’m so sorry,” Larissa said. “I misunderstood. It’s all my fault.”

It was 1997. Most of Larry Nassar’s victims had not yet been born.

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