PENNSYLVANIA
New York Daily News
CHRISTIAN RED
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
April 24, 2018
Penn State University avoided having its Division-I football program shut down in 2012 — what is referred to as the “death penalty” — after the NCAA leveled the school with severe sanctions. The punishment followed the release of the results from an independent investigation into the Jerry Sandusky sex abuse scandal.
But Marci Hamilton, the chief executive officer of CHILD USA, a think tank devoted to preventing child abuse and neglect, says that Michigan State University’s athletics department should receive that level of discipline after one of its former employees, disgraced physician Larry Nassar, carried out years-long sexual abuse of gymnasts both at MSU and in USA Gymnastics. Nassar has already received a sentence of 40 to 175 years in prison for sex abuse charges in a Michigan state case, and he was sentenced to 60 years in jail on federal child pornography charges last year.
“I think it should be the appropriate response,” Hamilton said. “And I think the U.S. Olympic Committee should be disbanded and reformulated by Congress. There are so many bad actors here.”
CHILD USA will sponsor an “Athletes & Abuse” all-day symposium Wednesday in Philadelphia at the University of Pennsylvania’s Class of 1949 Auditorium starting at 8:30 am. Among the speakers scheduled to appear is 1996 Olympic gold medal gymnast Dominique Moceanu, who has gone public with her claims of abuse by husband and wife USA Gymnastics coaches, Bela and Marta/Martha Karolyi. Nassar is tied to the Karolyis since he was a USA Gymnastics team physician and worked at the Karolyi Texas ranch, a gymnastics training center.
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