Manda JO I believe this may have been a way of saying, oh no, you are not getting out of facing your accusers by pleading guilty up front.
And at this stage giving the accusers a platform also helped draw attention to the enabler environment. A simple plea and sentence handled through motions would allow many others to wash their hands.
It is not unknown for Judges to make sentencing alocutions where they rip into the convicted, especially if they detect lack of remorse. As mentioned earlier upthread, though, the one thing I’d fault is the “someone do to him what he did to others” bit – even when speaking in the role of the righteous anger of justice, the court must refrain from seeming to condone extralegal abuse.
I don’t think she was condoning extralegal abuse. She was bemoaning the lack of legal abuse as an option. If she’d said “If the laws allowed it, I’d sentence you to the death penalty”, that wouldn’t be condoning prison murder.
I understand all the many, many great reasons why she allowed it. I think it’s fantastic that she allowed it. But is it a problem that it didn’t actually serve any legal purpose: she didn’t need the information?
Now all we need is a Samuel L Jackson PSA where he tells us that he’s tired of all these motherfucking sexual predators in positions of motherfucking power.
We know that, but words need to be considered even when used to deliver biting punishment. True, ironically enough had she said “if the law still allowed it I’d have you drawn and quartered in the public square the slow way” that would have got a pass as a hyperbolic way to say no punishment was enough.
I saw that Dad lunge at Larry Nassar today and I have to admit that I wished he got a couple shots in before being restrained. I know the system doesn’t work that way, but I could not help feel for the man.
I’m normally not a proponent of vigilante, frontier justice, but in this case, the dad was forced to listen to his daughters tell the entire courtroom in vivid detail how Nasser violated them and how they still live with the nightmare of what happened. A father’s natural instinct, hardwired into his DNA over many eons, is to protect his offspring. To listen to that, to be in that moment, to know that you weren’t able to protect them from this pain that they’ve lived with for years, and to know that the guy who caused it is just a few feet away…what man with two testicles, a penis, and hair on his chest wouldn’t have at least thought about charging that sonofabitch? It was a reaction in the moment. I’m glad the bailiffs restored order, and I’m equally glad that the father wasn’t charged. If the father had walked in on Nasser abusing them in real time, he would have been justified for beating him to a bloody pulp. You can’t blame him for at least wanting to do it right there on the spot.
Speaking as a man with two testicles, a penis and hair on his chest, I gotta say I agree, but I imagine any woman with two ovaries, a birthin’ vagina and two mammaries on her chest would have been just as fired up and justified in wanting to angry-pummel the sniveling snot out of that shitbird in that moment. Parental fury is limited by no gonads.
Nassar sentenced to another 40 to 125 years in Eaton county. Apparently Judge Janice Cunningham wanted to go easy on him, maxing his sentence at 125 years. (that’s a joke). It is a shame that they can’t sentence him to something like having to listen to an impact statement to get his meals each day.
I’m not a father but if I was one of those bailiffs I’d be so tempted to delay one or two seconds, long enough for the guy to get in a so-satisfying shot or two before being dragged off.
What I’m hoping is that these harsher sentences will follow into other offenders, where it has always seemed to me that we are too light, even before rapist Brock Turner and the absurdities of his sentence.
That said, I do wish that, when the incarceration years get particularly high, there was something that could be done to actually make that servable. I mean, maybe there could be extra restrictions that count as double and triple time or something. Otherwise, the numbers just start to seem meaningless after a certain point.
Coaches molesting young athletes is not limited to gymnastics. Swimming has had a huge problem with predatory coaches & a national governing body that has looked the other way (they even had the gall to charge swimmers a fee that went towards protecting US Swimming from litigation.
Many of these incidents could either be prevented or prevented from going further if coaches & administrators of amateur sporting bodies were made mandatory reporters of sexual abuse. Fortunately, Senate Bill 534 (Safe Sport Act) does just that. Write your senators & representatives to encourage them to pass this important piece of legislation!
Some here have called for MSU to get penalties similar to PSU. While I agree that MSU should be harshly punished, my question is what should happen to the NCAA? They received complaints as well but didn’t act on them.
Yesterday, I saw a post on a pharmacy message board from someone who had an elderly customer who was embarrassed that she needed antidepressants; she’d recently had a lot of trouble sleeping and told the pharmacist that it was because she was so upset about “that doctor who abused the gymnasts.” She then looked around to see if anyone could overhear her, and told the pharmacist, “I was abused too. I’ve never told anybody, not even my husband.”
A class act, unlike the schools, governing bodies, and even the NC-fuckin’-AA. They have broken a trust and should be burned to the ground in the hope that something better will rise from the ashes.
Yes. It might not be much comfort to those who were abused, but at least they could take pride in having brought all this to light.
(There’s way too much casual corruption in the entire international sports world–FIFA, etc. are as bad as the Olympics, if reports are to be believed.)
Nassar’s former boss has been arrested and indicted for assaulting female students. Found on his work computer were nude selfies of MSU students, as well as a video of Nassar performing one of his special “treatments”.
Put this fucker in the cell next to Nassar and throw away the key.
