Nassar Larry - The girls: an all-American town, a predatory doctor, and the untold story of the gymnasts who brought him down

By Tasha Schwikert, US Olympic Team medalist, and Jordan Schwikert, US National Team member

A t first we found it hard to believe. Larry Nassar, the famous Olympic Team doctor, had been accused of sexually abusing young girls. We thought, What? Larry? No way. He was the good guy. The one who listened. The one who cared. The one who slipped us secret treats, like granola bars. Amid all the brutal coaching and training in gymnastics, he was our trusted friend.

It didnt immediately register that he had abused us too. It took some time. Its a strange feeling when you come to realize, as an adult, that you were abused as a child. Especially when the abuser is your doctor, the person who is supposed to have your best interests at heart. It was difficult to grasp that this had happened to us. As gymnasts, we had been taught to be tough. We were so mentally and physically strong, we thought that no one could take advantage of us. We were the most resilient athletes around.

We werent alone in our initial disbelief. Many of the women he abused as children had a hard time believing he had abused them. This tends to surprise people; they assume we all knew we had been abused but had kept it quiet. But many of us did not know. He was the Olympic doctor. He said he was doing a medical treatment. We trusted him.

The two of us grew up putting our faith in coaches and doctors. They were our world. We started gymnastics as toddlers, going to Mommy and Me classes with our mom in our hometown of Las Vegas. She encouraged us to try different sportssoccer, T-ball, tennis. She had been a serious athlete herself, a tennis player who had made it to Wimbledon. But we loved gymnastics. When Mom took us to play tennis, we ended up doing cartwheels and backflips all over the court. We just wanted to go to the gym. We had found our passion.

Were pretty close in age, just a year and nine months apart, and we progressed in the sport together. Our parents let us pursue our dream. They were dice dealers at Caesars Palace, and Mom would drop us off at the gym and take a nap there before heading to work. Our coach, Cassie Rice, was young and just starting out, and she was great. Her goal was to make us the best athletesand the best peoplewe could be. That was more important to her than any awards or accomplishments. If we had a bad day, she encouraged us and lifted us up. She was all about positive reinforcement.

When we started winning state competitions, people noticed. In the midnineties, we got invited to join the Talent Opportunity Program, known as TOPs, a training program for promising young gymnasts run by USA Gymnastics, the governing body for the sport and for the US Olympic Team. As part of the program, we qualified for the TOPs national training camp, held in Tulsa, Oklahoma. There, the days were long and tiring. The coaches at the camp also coached the US National Team, so we got a taste of what it takes to reach the elite level of the sport. We actually looked forward to the camps nutrition class because we could escape the relentless training. Not that the nutrition class was very helpfulwe were just told what not to eat. That was the first time we started thinking about food in a negative way.

By our early teens, we had climbed to the elite level. When we made the US National Team, the training got toxic. We spent a lot of time at the Karolyi Ranch, the official training center for the National Team, based in Texas. We dreaded going there. The coaching was all negativeverbally and emotionally abusive. It was a terrible, threatening environment, all about power and control. As soon as you stepped into that gym, you became a robot. You werent allowed to be exhausted, to be human. You turned off your emotions. If you got injured, the coaches made you feel useless, so everyone hid their injuries and kept training, taking medications to mask the pain. We saw girls get so tired, they nearly landed on their heads while doing skills, yet they were ordered to repeat those skills again and again. It was dangerous, with coaches pushing us way past the point of fatigue. None of us had a voice. To speak out meant angering the coaches and losing your standing. It was such an extreme environment, Aly Raisman once said she was scared to ask for a bar of soap.

Our parents werent allowed at the Karolyi Ranch. But Larry Nassar was there. He was always on hand for the training camps at the ranch, and he became a best friend. We could go to him and be human. His training room was our safe place; the door would shut, and we would confide our problems without worrying that we would get in trouble. Thats how he drew us in.

For me, Tasha speaking here, the abuse started when I was fifteen, after an incident at the ranch. We were all doing the oversplits, splits in which you elevate one or both of your feet, forcing your body to go down deeper than the regular splits. Coach Bela Karolyi pushed me down too hard, but I held back my tears. I had just watched Bela shouting at Jamie Dantzscher, calling her a baby, and I didnt want to get yelled at myself. The next day, limping from pain in my groin area, I got sent to Larry. He massaged and penetrated me vaginally with his bare hands, claiming it was a medical treatment that would loosen my muscles. I trusted him because he was a respected doctor, and I had known him for years. Also, its important to note that in gymnastics, youre extremely isolated. I didnt know about sexual abuse. And you spend so many hours of your life in training at the gym, theres no time for dating or socializing. I had no experience with boys or sex. None of us did.