Larry Nassar survivors sue Michigan State University, alleging ‘illegal secret votes’ prevented release of 6,000 documents
By Rob Frehse, Zenebou Sylla and Nic Anderson, CNN
(CNN) — An attorney for a group of women who were sexually abused by former Michigan State University sports physician Larry Nassar filed a lawsuit Thursday alleging the school’s board of trustees held “illegal secret votes” to prevent the release of thousands of documents in the case, according to the court filing.
The women and a group of parents of Nassar’s victims filed the suit against the board of trustees and the school after the university declined to share about 6,000 documents with Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel for her investigation into how the school handled Nassar. Nessel in 2021 said her office was “forced to close” the inquiry after the school declined to waive attorney-client privilege and release the documents.
The plaintiffs ask a judge to compel the university to release the documents, according to the suit filed by attorney Azzam Elder in Circuit Court in Michigan’s Ingham County.
A spokesperson for the school in East Lansing said university officials have not seen or been served with the lawsuit and do not comment on pending litigation.
“We all deserve the truth,” Nassar survivor says
“We can’t heal as a community until we know that everyone who enabled a predator is accountable,” Nassar survivor Melissa Brown Hudecz said in a news release from Elder’s office. “By protecting the 6,000 secret documents and anyone named in them, the board is adding to survivors’ trauma with their lack of institutional accountability.”
“Students who are on campus now deserve to know they are safer than we were,” she added. “We all deserve the truth. It matters.”
Elder said the group is looking for accountability, not money.
“We contend that board members made a behind-closed-doors secret decision not to release the records in blatant violation of the Open Meetings Act,” the attorney said in a news release. “They followed that up with violations of the Freedom of Information Act when we requested emails that might show they discussed and made a closed-door decision on the matter in violation of law.”
Nassar serving time in prison for federal and state convictions
Nassar, who also was a USA Gymnastics doctor, is serving a 60-year sentence for federal child pornography charges.
In early July, he was stabbed 10 times at the prison in Florida where he is incarcerated. Joe Rojas, president of the local correction officers’ union, credited prison guards on the scene with saving Nassar’s life.
In addition to his federal sentence given in 2017, Nassar was sentenced in a Michigan state court in 2018 to up to 175 years in prison after he pleaded guilty to seven counts of criminal sexual conduct in Ingham County and admitted to using his trusted medical position over more than two decades to assault and molest girls under the guise of medical treatment.
A total of 156 women gave victim impact statements in court, describing how they went to Nassar to receive treatment for sports injuries only to be sexually assaulted and told it was a form of treatment.
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