USA Gymnastics says it has reached a $380 million settlement with the sexual abuse survivors of former national team doctor and convicted sex offender Larry Nassar.
The settlement is part of a bankruptcy reorganization plan confirmed Monday by a U.S. bankruptcy court in Indiana, debtors’ administrators for USA Gymnastics said in a statement. A survivors committee approved the plan, they said.
The settlement orders USA Gymnastics to implement policies and processes to protect athletes from abuse, including having at least one survivor on the organization’s board.
“USA Gymnastics is deeply sorry for the trauma and pain that survivors have endured as a result of this organization’s actions and inactions,” President and CEO Li Li Leung said in the statement Monday.
“Individually and collectively, survivors have stepped forward with bravery to advocate for enduring change in this sport,” he said.
In 2017 Nassar, 58, who is accused of molesting hundreds of former patients, pleaded guilty in a Michigan court to having sexually abused 10 minors. He is serving a virtual life sentence, technically up to 175 years in prison.
USA Gymnastics filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and reorganization Dec. 5 “to pave the way toward a settlement with survivors,” administrators said.
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Survivors voted “overwhelmingly” to approve the deal late last month, they said. More than 90 percent of the more than 500 victims voted yes to a tentative settlement in September.
Olympic gold medalist Simone Biles told the Senate Judiciary Committee in September that the federal government failed to provide necessary oversight of an organization created by Congress.
“I don’t want another young gymnast or Olympic athlete or any individual to experience the horror that I and hundreds of others have endured before, during and continuing to this day in the wake of the Larry Nassar abuse,” she said.
Nassar, who was based in Michigan, also worked for Michigan State University in Lansing.
USA Gymnastics first took allegations of his sexual abuse to authorities in 2015. A Justice Department report this year criticized the FBI, alleging that it moved slowly and made missteps as it investigated.
Survivors and USA Gymnastics this summer proposed a $425 million settlement contingent on insurers’ approval.
A trust fund for survivors will be covered by insurers, the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee and USA Gymnastics, the administrators said.
Kathryn Carson, USA Gymnastics’ board chair, said in the administrators’ statement that survivors have “used their voices to elicit meaningful change and restructuring within USA Gymnastics, and their impact extends far beyond our sport.”
Associated Press contributed.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
