US Olympics gymnastics team doctor Larry Nassar gets 175 years

Sports doctor and sexual predator Larry Nassar was sentenced to up to 175 years in prison yesterday.

Larry Nassar is sentenced yesterday. Picture: AFP

As his victims sobbed in the back of the court, a US judge sentenced sports doctor and sexual predator Larry Nassar to up to 175 years in prison yesterday, declaring “I have just signed your death ­warrant”.

The life sentence in Lansing, Michigan, came after a week of heartbreaking victim impact statements from many of the more than 150 women, many of them former top US gymnasts, who were molested by Nassar.

One of his victims was Olympics superstar Simone Biles.

The former doctor to the US Olympics gymnastics team stood blankly as judge Rosemarie ­Aquilina delivered her sentence.

“It is my honour and privilege to sentence you. You do not deserve to walk outside a prison ever again,” she said.

“You have done nothing to control those urges and anywhere you walk, destruction will occur to those most vulnerable.”

She described Nassar’s actions as “precise, calculated, manipulative, devious, despicable”.

The sentence, with a 40-year non-parole period, ends a 16-month trial that heard allegations of sexual abuse against Nassar over 25 years, including during his time as doctor for the US gymnastic team where he treated and abused vulnerable and young teenage girls, sometimes when their parents were in the same room.

The sentence came on top of a 60-year federal sentence that Nassar, 54, also faces for child pornography crimes to which he pleaded guilty last year. He is also scheduled to be sentenced next week on more assault convictions in Eaton County, Michigan.

He briefly turned to his victims in court yesterday and offered a halting apology. He said “no words” could describe how sorry he was for his crimes and the victim’s accounts had “shaken me to my core”.

But then the judge read to the court parts of a letter Nassar had written to her contradicting his apology. In the letter he claimed his actions with athletes were “medical not sexual” and that he was “a good doctor because my treatment worked”.

In the letter he also blamed the media for convincing his victims that he was wrong and then — to the audible shocks of victims in the court — he wrote “hell hath no fury like a woman scorned”. After reading out the letter, Judge ­Aquilina said to Nassar: “It was not treatment what you did: it was not medical. I wouldn’t send my dogs to you, sir.”

Over seven days, the court heart testimony from Nassar’s victims about how his ­actions and his betrayal of trust had shattered their lives.

“How dare you ask any of us for forgiveness?” Jamie Dantzscher, a 2000 Olympian, said as Nassar sat in the court. “Your days of manipulation are over, we have a voice, we have the power now.’

The case has stunned the US gymnastic community, which has asked how Nassar was allowed to practise for so long. It has led to the resignation of the chief executive and three board members of USA Gymnastics. Sponsors have also withdrawn from backing the organisation.

Lou Anna Simon, president of Michigan State university, where Nassar worked, yesterday ­announced her resignation.

The US Olympic Committee chief executive Scott Blackmun wrote an open letter yesterday apologising to US athletes, saying the Nassar case was “worse than our own worst fears”.

Prosecutor Angela Povilaitis said Nassar had “perfected a built-in excuse and defence” as a ­doctor, even though he was “performing hocus-pocus medicine”.

“It takes some kind of sick perversion to not only assault a child but to do so with her parent in the room … to do so while a line-up of eager young gymnasts waited.”

Cameron Stewart is The Australian’s Washington correspondent and US contributor for Sky News Australia