At Larry Nassar sentencing hearing, a parade of horror and catharsis

The courtroom door swung open just after 9 a.m. and in shuffled the man who, before September 2016, was known throughout the region as the Michigan State sports physician who also treated America’s best gymnasts; the personable father of three who happily chatted with mothers about his Catholic faith and Olympic travels while he performed unusual treatments he warned their daughters might find a bit uncomfortable at first.

Gaunt and haggard, he wore a dark blue jumpsuit, orange slippers and thin-framed glasses he periodically removed throughout the week, as dozens of young women stepped up to a microphone a few feet away and confronted him with accounts of what he did to them behind closed doors — at Michigan State, at local gymnastics centers, and in his home — and how irrevocably it changed their lives.

Nearly a year and a half after one woman filed a police report and contacted a newspaper, the criminal cases against Larry Nassar are nearing an end this week with a marathon sentencing hearing — 105 of the more than 130 girls and women who’ve accused Nassar of abuse are expected to speak — that began Tuesday and could end Friday, before a judge levies a sentence for seven sex crimes Nassar has admitted to as part of a plea deal.

The specifics of the pending sentence have caused little anxiety in the courtroom: With the 54-year-old already facing a 60-year federal term for child pornography crimes and a 25-year minimum as part of this plea deal, the judge has said she expects Nassar to spend the rest of his life in prison.

Rather than the sentence, the focus of this sentencing hearing has been the victims, many speaking publicly for the first time. Their accounts have been harrowing and heart-rending, but also, at times, victorious and cathartic. They have described the devastating toll Nassar’s crimes have taken, not just on those he abused, but also on parents and coaches wracked by guilt, or possessed with rage, about warning signs missed and complaints ignored.

A projector screen has displayed photographs of victims taken at the time of their abuse, an array of girls in gymnastics leotards and school class portraits. The first photos projected Tuesday were of a smiling brown-haired girl named Kyle Stephens — in one she was about 5 or 6, in the other she’s a few years older, with braces — who is now 26. A former family friend of Nassar’s, Stephens had been known in court filings before this week as “Victim ZA.”

Stephens’s family often spent Sundays with the Nassars, the mothers cooking dinner while Nassar played with the children. Stephens was 6 the first time a game of hide-and-seek took a detour into the boiler room, she said, and 12 when she decided to tell her parents what Nassar was doing to her.

Standing a few feet behind her, Stephens’s mother wept Tuesday as her daughter explained what happened next: Nassar said their daughter was lying, and the parents believed him. They made Stephens apologize. As a teenager, she said, she began to detach from her parents, often telling people she had no family.

“Larry Nassar wedged himself between myself and my family, and used his leverage as a family friend to pry us apart until we fractured,” she said.

Her father committed suicide in 2016, Stephens believes, in part due to the realization his daughter had been telling the truth.

“I’ve been coming for you for a long time,” Stephens told Nassar. “Perhaps you have figured it out by now, but little girls don’t stay little forever. They turn into strong women, who have come back to destroy your world.”