A gym built on fear

LANSING (MI)
CNN

March 29, 2018

By Majlie De Puy Kamp

Larry Nassar molested them. Now gymnasts describe a different kind of abuse by famed Olympic coach John Geddert

Late one night in the fall of 2012, 17-year-old Brittany Aragon overdosed. She took four Valium pills, lay down in bed and waited.

She was nervous, she said, but the thought of having to go back to the gym and face her coach, John Geddert, terrified her more than taking the pills.

While Larry Nassar was sexually abusing gymnasts in the back room of Twistars Gymnastics in Lansing, Michigan, Geddert – the famed Olympic coach and then-owner of the gym – was subjecting them to a different kind of horror: routinely ignoring their injuries and verbally assaulting them, according to former gymnasts and their families.

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