FBI let it pass and 40 more women were abused in the 15 months from the initial complaint. FBI has a lot a explaining to do. This is disgusting.
Nasser was no anomaly. A charismatic man who very successfully directs young people in sports competition has been well-nigh untouchable until very recently. There was a similar scandal in high-level equestrian sports not long ago. The guy had been abusing young girls and teens for decades.
These men are like demigods within their competitive worlds. The whole system is built around people like that. They have star systems, and the chance to work under them is a life dream. People who complain will simply be discarded, and it would feel like your life is over. Everyone enables them – they build personal teams, and broad networks of enablers. To speak up is to get your head chopped off.
USA Gymnastics was no different than any other bureaucracy that has invested, not only in these men, but in their own reputation. The Boy Scouts, the Catholic Church, you name it. The names vary but the system of denial doesn’t.
Which leads to a situation where those in charge don’t “clean house” preemptively of their own initiative, because that would be admitting the house is not already clean to begin with.
Yep. Imagine what would happen to USA Gymnastics if they launched a public investigation of Nasser themselves. It would seem to them that nothing could be worse. Of course, that turned out not to be true.