The facts
Judge Rosemarie Aquilina, who sentenced former USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar to up to 175 years in prison in 2018 for abusing over 250 women and girls, has expressed disappointment with the lack of significant change since Nassar's crimes were exposed a decade ago. Speaking at the World Gymnastics Championships, Aquilina stated that human rights should be prioritized over the pursuit of sporting success. She noted that while Nassar's crimes came to light 10 years ago, meaningful reforms have been minimal. Aquilina believes the continued emphasis on 'money, medals and notoriety over the safety of children' is the reason for this stagnation. She joined activists and survivors in Rotterdam, who questioned the inadequacy of reforms. Claire Heafford, CEO of Gymnasts for Change International, echoed these concerns, stating survivors are still not being heard and the scale of reform does not match the revelations. Minky Worden of Human Rights Watch observed that while some progress exists in athlete advocacy and safeguarding rules, their implementation remains a challenge, and the gymnastics scandal has not led to the necessary reckoning across all sports.
Our take
Ten years. A whole fucking decade since the world learned that USA Gymnastics and the US Olympic Committee had, for generations, been operating a state-of-the-art, gold-medal-winning child molestation factory. They had a head doctor, Larry Nassar, who spent more time with his fingers up little girls' asses than a proctologist at a chili cook-off, and a system that treated every whisper of complaint like a threat to the fucking medal count. And what has changed? According to the judge who finally sent that bastard to die in a cage, not a goddamn thing.
Judge Rosemarie Aquilina, the one adult in the room who actually acted like one, stood up at the World Gymnastics Championships this week and said the quiet part out loud for the ten-thousandth time: the sport's priorities are still 'money, medals and notoriety over the safety of children.' In other words, the same greedy, self-important, morally bankrupt pricks who built the system that enabled Nassar are still in charge, or their spiritual successors are, and they have decided that a few new policy PDFs and a 'safeguarding' seminar are a perfectly acceptable price to pay for not having to actually dismantle their shitty, abusive empire.
They haven't had a reckoning; they've had a PR makeover. They haven't prioritized human rights; they've prioritized liability waivers. Claire Heafford from Gymnasts for Change says survivors still aren't being heard, which is bureaucrat-speak for 'we are still ignoring the women we helped ruin because their trauma is bad for branding.' Minky Worden from Human Rights Watch notes that implementing new rules is a challenge, which is NGO-speak for 'the bastards in the blazers are resisting every step because it might cost them a fucking dollar.'
The entire apparatus is a monument to cowardice and greed. A decade after one of the most horrific systemic abuse scandals in sports history, the people who could fix it are still the same dickheads who think a child's right to not be sexually assaulted is a negotiable point in the pursuit of a shiny piece of metal. Aquilina showed up to hand down a sentence on the whole pathetic enterprise: guilty of being a colossal, unrepentant cunt.
