Part 3
I've been trying to figure out how the girls in gymnastics and other sports were sexually assaulted for more than two decades without anybody's parents reporting Larry Nassar to the police rather than the people in business to produce bronze, silver, and gold medals for the United States.
In various discussions I've had over the past few weeks, a number of women tried to tell me that girls don't tell, that this is the reason this abuse went on for so long. Dozens of studies do show children don't tell on their sexual predators.
Continued from
THE PARENTS OF LARRY NASSAR SURVIVORS ARE NOT CO-VICTIMS
http://blackchickrocked.blogspot.com/2018/01/the-parents-of-larry-nassar-survivors.html
During one discussion on social media, sure enough, upwards of 90 percent of us -- including me-- never told anybody until years had passed. And a bunch of us never told our parents.http://blackchickrocked.blogspot.com/2018/01/the-parents-of-larry-nassar-survivors.html
The thing that amazed and dismayed me during that discussion was that:
- some grown women actually thought these studies meant that virtually nobody but the sexually assaulted* little girls knew --over the course of more than 20 years. (Little girls acting abilities are generally not Oscar worthy)
- that my persistent question: Why didn't the girls tell their parents? could somehow imply the girls are at fault rather than their parents they were too afraid to talk to.
In fact, this is just one symptom of what amazes me about how this story has been warped into a young women triumphant story in the news when this is a failure to recognize child abuse of the sexual variety for decades.
These children, some of them 8 years old, had nobody to protect them from routine sexual assault UNTIL one of the little girls grew up and did protected herself as a young woman Rachael Denhollander was the one that stopped screwing around with entities in business for profit (USA Gymnastics, Michigan State University, and Karyoli Ranch) and went to the police.
These children, some of them 8 years old, had nobody to protect them from routine sexual assault UNTIL one of the little girls grew up and did protected herself as a young woman Rachael Denhollander was the one that stopped screwing around with entities in business for profit (USA Gymnastics, Michigan State University, and Karyoli Ranch) and went to the police.
I don't know if other PARENTS went to the police over the course of 20 years, possibly ignored because our press is to busy trying to turn this garbage into a feel good story that I have no idea if anybody is asking parents of the gymnasts anything but softball questions.
The parents may not be villains. But they are not co-victims either, even if the girls that were abused want them to be.
The parents may not be villains. But they are not co-victims either, even if the girls that were abused want them to be.
The other problem I'm having with the way this story is being sold is this: We are not addressing the societal problem at the root of the Larry Nassar Scandal.
One of the reasons Larry Nassar got away with sexually assaulting little girls for more than 20 years is due to it being normal in our society to ignore the pain, fear, and anguish of women, much less little girls.
And it is here where the sexual child abuse of little girls and #MeToo overlap. But they are not the same. However, the #BelieveWomen crap putting mud in the water here too because it IS true that these female children were not believed BUT IT IS not true in the case of women such as those in Hollywood.
Plenty of men believed women were being sexually "harassed," they just didn't care or call it "sexual harassment" much less "sexual assault."
Some men knew they could get away with abusing women because they have more social power while other men thought "boys will be boys" about their buddies.
Ben Affleck grabbed a woman's breast while on camera. His brother had crew members and such exposing themselves on a public set before he supposedly got in bed with a female co-worker. Director Brett Ratner commented that he could hear woman's vulva flapping while she walked while on a public set. And he was questioned on a rape charge long before that. #BelieveWomen has nothing to do with this behavior.
But these little girl gymnasts weren't believed when they spoke up. And if their fear and upset was as obvious as it sounded during the victim statements they gave during Nassar's trial, then their pain and fear was ignored by the adults around them in a dozen different ways
Women and girls being ignored and/or not being taken seriously is not new. I've had a number of conversations in real time and I'm on social media where doctors told women their pain was nothing. I
I experienced this first hand when I was eleven.
Less than a year after I began my menstrual cycle I began having horrific cramps along with gastrointestinal problems and vomiting that would last for the first two days of my cycle every month. EVERY month.
Doctor after doctor and eventually my father said, "you have to be able to endure a little discomfort."
I lucked-up and got a female doctor in my late teens that told me about breaking the progesterone cycle with ibuprofen....which required a cycle as regular as a clock. That let me out. So timing my medication which was about as effective as using he rhythm method to avoid getting pregnant.
Later, as an adult in my thirties after things got worse, I went to a female doctor who actually did tests, took blood work and did an ultrasound -- just like she was taking my pain seriously. It was she that told me I was likely having cramps as bad as giving birth every month because of the huge number of fibroid tumors I had inside my uterus, in the walls of uterus and on a stalk attached to my uterus.
I was admitted to the hospital for an embolization rather than a hysterectomy some time later.
In my own home...
My parents would protect me from all manner of nonsense from adult white racists that I would encounter in classrooms and guidance counselor offices. But inside the house, it was different. My parents, my mother in particular, had an infinite capacity for ignoring any emotional pain or general upset that was caused by the rare physical abuse, the regular verbal abuse and gaslighting, and even threats of being hit by an adult with a baseball bat.
All of this is why I thought maybe I was projecting my own neglect and occasional abuse on these girls. So I listened to others and bent over backwards to understand what the parents might have been doing that enabled them to allow this sexual form of child abuse to continue
....over a period of 20 years
I even decided that the worst thing some of the parents did was abdicate responsibility for their children to USA Gymnastics and Karyoli Ranch, where they trained.
....over a period of 20 years
I even decided that the worst thing some of the parents did was abdicate responsibility for their children to USA Gymnastics and Karyoli Ranch, where they trained.
But then I heard Larry Nassar sexually abused these children while some mothers were in the room.
He positioned his body so they couldn't see him put his hand down the girls shorts. But these adult women couldn't see their child's face during and immediately after the assault?
He positioned his body so they couldn't see him put his hand down the girls shorts. But these adult women couldn't see their child's face during and immediately after the assault?
In discussions over the past few weeks a number of young women who have been sexually assaulted as children in the past as well wanted me to believe that they were such superb little actresses that their parent(s) couldn't have known. And I can tell the gymnasts want to believe the same thing of their own parents.
Who wouldn't?
Nobody wants to believe their parents either aren't paying enough attention or that they're not invincible when they ARE paying attention.
Who wouldn't?
Nobody wants to believe their parents either aren't paying enough attention or that they're not invincible when they ARE paying attention.
Despite all of the justifications I've heard in regards to the parents, regardless of what the girls decided to tell or not tell, each parent in the room during the sexual assault had to have seen discomfort and pain on the faces of their girl child.
And I'm not really guessing here.
And I'm not really guessing here.
Mattie Larson, one of the gymnast-victims, said she kept calling her parents begging them to let her go home. It is safe assumption she never said why based on other interviews I've seen. But it's worth noting that crying and begging weren't enough for her to be allowed to leave.
In an interview on Good Morning America, Larson actually said she pretended to fall down in the shower at home, loud enough do that her parents could hear it....all so she didn't have go back. It was an elaborate ruse, complete with splashing water and injuring herself. (see the link at the end)
Do you know what I finally realized about the mothers that were standing in the room while her daughter was sexually abused and the mother who initially defended Nassar against the allegations?
These parents were used to seeing their daughters in pain, sometimes fairly bad pain.
That is, I think the anguish and pain on their daughters faces wasn't any different when Dr. Nassar was sexually abusing them on Wednesday from when Dr Innocent was torturing them by stretching out overused muscles and joints on Thursday.
Seeing their daughters suffer was normal.
As stated before, I think adults are conditioned to ignore the emotions of girls, to label their tears and upset as "over reactions." But USA Gymnastics created an atmosphere where ignoring the the humanity of little girls was raised to new horrific heights.
And the parents of these girls signed up for all this hoping for glory at the Olympics one day.
And the parents of these girls signed up for all this hoping for glory at the Olympics one day.
In another interview where the girls are explaining why they didn't tell and save themselves --instead of parents explaining why they didn't see their child was being abused-- Mattie Larson said her and the other girls would get in trouble for saying they didn't sleep well. They would get in trouble for not smiling. They would get in trouble for saying they didn't feel well.
Another girl revealed that parents weren't allowed in some of the practice gyms at all.
These girls were being working hours upon hours per day so that they can compete on the behalf of our country, stretching and building muscles upon muscles so that they can perform feats that look almost super human....feats that will leave some with shoulder pain etc for life.
When it comes to elite artistic gymnastics, most female competitors begin the sport at before the age of five and train around 40 hours a week, pushing their strength and flexibility to the limits, at times defying anatomy and biology to stick their routines.
Naturally, that level of physical and psychological stress can have an effect on a growing body, with most elite female competitors retiring from the sport in their early twenties.
"Stress fractures are common amongst former gymnastics," says Natasha Melacrinis, a physiotherapist from the Sydney Sports Medicine Centre and former elite sports aerobics competitor.
Many female gymnasts have low bone density issues. Decades of extreme physical exercises can lead to a later onset of puberty and therefore a lower level of oestrogen being released in the body. As a result, "bones play catch up" to fast-growing muscles.
.
https://www.sbs.com.au/topics/science/humans/article/2016/08/09/what-happens-gymnasts-body-it-ages
This is why these girls are going to doctors like Nassar constantly instead of only going when they are sick like the rest of us do.
This is why these girls are going to doctors like Nassar constantly instead of only going when they are sick like the rest of us do.
And these girls are being worked like they are at a full-time job, because it is a job. Endorsements worth millions of dollars at stake. Those girls are working 40 hours a day on their bodies. And when they called home crying wanting to go home --without much of an explanation-- did their parents say "no pain no gain" Did their parents say, "You said you wanted to do this...we've wasted too much money for you to just...." blah blah blah.
When the girls didn't want to do their "job" -- those abused by Nassar and those not abused by Nassar-- were adults really telling them "Shut up and do your job" and "Don't talk back to the boss" and "Never tell the boss crap he doesn't want to hear." This kind of work advice is the same all over except we're talking about children.
This is why I consider Larry Nassar to have hidden his sexual assaults, his sexual abuse of children inside regular/everyday non-sexual child abuse.
Child Labor laws were designed to stop child abuse. Why don't these laws apply to the gymnastics?
Listen to the victim impact statements for yourself. Then try to imagine a little girl calls home crying to come home. Why did Mattie Larson have to bang her own head against something, injure herself in order to NOT go back to a place she was that terrified of?
Does it really matter that she didn't name Nassar and say exactly what he did when she was THIS afraid?
In the final analysis I'm not sure the parents not knowing about the sexual assault is the biggest factor in why those girls remain exposed to Larry Nasser.
Ordinary girls, not gymnasts working 40 hours a week, are taught the emotional pain that sometimes causes them to cry is so much nothing. But boys are taught by patriarchy soaked parents that crying makes them a sissy, a girl. So now I'm trying to imagine what might be happening to little boy athletes at their professional gig.
It could conceivably take an even longer time for a scandal involving boys to surface.
It could conceivably take an even longer time for a scandal involving boys to surface.
When a child is being hurt by an adult and we are asking why the child didn't report what was happening to a virtual stranger or a temporary adult fixture in their life instead of their parent, we need to ask what's wrong with American parenting.
Right now authorities are looking into which adults at USA Gymnastics and the University Of Michigan. But every adult anywhere near this, including the parents, should be investigated. Anybody who didn't call the police needs to be questioned.
I know that sociologists have shown us that human beings have a funny relationship with authority. And studies like the Milgram Experiment have revealed that many people or most people will obey an authority figure even if they are told to do something heinous to another. And history of Europe shows us this, especially in the 1930s and 1940s.
But the parents still need to explain what they knew when and why they didn't report what was happening to the police instead of the authorities at USA Gymnastics and Michigan Univeristy and Karyoli Ranch, the training facility.
If the press was reporting this as a child abuse incident involving sex, I think we'd be discussing this in public already.
Right now authorities are looking into which adults at USA Gymnastics and the University Of Michigan. But every adult anywhere near this, including the parents, should be investigated. Anybody who didn't call the police needs to be questioned.
I know that sociologists have shown us that human beings have a funny relationship with authority. And studies like the Milgram Experiment have revealed that many people or most people will obey an authority figure even if they are told to do something heinous to another. And history of Europe shows us this, especially in the 1930s and 1940s.
But the parents still need to explain what they knew when and why they didn't report what was happening to the police instead of the authorities at USA Gymnastics and Michigan Univeristy and Karyoli Ranch, the training facility.
If the press was reporting this as a child abuse incident involving sex, I think we'd be discussing this in public already.
We cannot afford to let the families "have their privacy" in regards to this part of the story. If we do not figure out what went wrong we won't figure out how to prevent Jerry Sandusky and Larry Nassar from being followed by others. Predators will always be with us. We can't have ONE predator prey on hundreds, possibly thousands of children again and again.
We have to stop this from happening to again or at least limit the scope of the predator. And in order to do that we need more knowledge.
To be even more specific, we should all know before this story fades away whether the parents believed that digital penetration was part of the treatment when the judge said at sentencing that the "parents were groomed too"
MATTIE LARSON INTERVIEW
This level of parental incompetence needs punishment. And the threat of punishment might be enough to get some parents to call the police to investigate a questionable handling of their child instead of the people who are most likely to say what those parents wanted to hear, "Nothing bad is happening to your daughter."
In order for us to get a real investigation going, in public, we're going to stop the feel good story from women over-coming and change it to child abuse that went unchecked for decades that helped hide a sexual predator.
In order for us to get a real investigation going, in public, we're going to stop the feel good story from women over-coming and change it to child abuse that went unchecked for decades that helped hide a sexual predator.
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