WASHINGTON — Disgraced sports doctor Larry Nassar, who was convicted of sexually assaulting Olympic and female gymnasts, was stabbed multiple times by another inmate at a federal prison in Florida facing staff shortages.
The attack took place at Coleman Prison on Sunday and Nassar’s condition was stable on Monday, two people familiar with the case told The Associated Press.
One of the people said Nassar was stabbed in the back and chest. The two officers guarding the unit where Nassar was being held were working mandatory overtime due to staff shortages, one of the people said.
The people were not authorized to publicly discuss details of the attack or the ongoing investigation and spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity.
Nassar is serving decades in prison for convictions in state and federal courts. He admitted to sexually assaulting athletes while working at Michigan State University and USA Gymnastics in Indianapolis, which trains Olympians. Nassar also pleaded guilty in a separate case to possession of child sexual abuse images.
The federal Bureau of Prisons has faced a significant staff shortage in recent years, an issue that came to the fore in 2019 when convicted financier Jeffrey Epstein committed suicide in a New York federal prison.
A 2021 Associated Press survey found that nearly a third of federal correctional officer positions were vacant nationwide, forcing prisons to deploy cooks, teachers, nurses and other workers to guard inmates. Staff shortages have hampered emergency response in other prisons, including suicides.
Other AP investigations have revealed sexual abuse and criminal behavior at the Bureau of Prisons, the Justice Department’s largest agency, with more than 30,000 employees, 158,000 inmates and an annual budget of about $8 billion.
The agency’s new leader, Colette Peters, was brought in last year to reform the crisis-ravaged agency. She has vowed to reform archaic hiring practices and bring new transparency. But the problems have persisted, as evidenced by the recent suicide of Ted Kaczynski, known as the “Unabomber,” at a federal lockup in North Carolina.
On Sunday, one of Nassar’s unit officers worked a third consecutive day of overtime, a 16-hour shift each, said one of the people familiar with the matter. The other officer was on a second consecutive day of mandatory overtime, the person said.
Rachael Denhollander, the first woman to publicly accuse Nassar, tweeted Monday that none of the women she spoke to were pleased that Nassar was attacked. “We mourn the reality that protecting others from him came with the near certainty that we would wake up to this one day.”
Another victim, Sarah Klein, said the stabbing forced her and others to relive their abuse and trauma “at the hands of Nassar and the institutions, including law enforcement, that protected him and allowed him to prey on children.”
“I want him to face the harsh prison sentence he received because of survivors’ votes. I am absolutely not in favor of violence because it is morally wrong and death would be an easy way out for Nassar,” Klein said in an emailed statement.
More than 150 women and girls testified at the 2018 sentencing of Nassar, who harassed athletes under the guise of medical treatment. Some of them testified that — over the course of more than two decades of sexual abuse — they told adults, including coaches and athletic trainers, what happened, but it went unreported.
More than 100 women, including Olympic gold medalist Simone Biles, are collectively demanding more than $1 billion from the federal government for the FBI’s failure to stop Nassar after agents learned of allegations against him in 2015. He was arrested by the Michigan State University Police Department in 2016, over a year later.
The Justice Department’s inspector general said in July 2021 that the FBI made “fundamental” mistakes in investigating the sexual assault allegations against Nassar and failed to treat the case with the “utter seriousness”. More athletes said they were harassed before the FBI stepped in.
USA Gymnastics had conducted its own internal investigation, and the organization’s president at the time, Stephen Penny, reported the allegations to the FBI’s field office in Indianapolis. But it took months for the agency to open a formal investigation.
The FBI acknowledged behavior that was “inexcusable and discrediting” America’s top law enforcement agency.
Michigan State, accused of missing opportunities over many years to stop Nassar, agreed to pay $500 million to more than 300 women and girls who had been assaulted by him. USA Gymnastics and the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee have reached a $380 million settlement.
In June 2022, the Michigan Supreme Court rejected a final appeal by Nassar. Lawyers for Nassar said he was unfairly treated in 2018 and deserved a new hearing, based on vindictive comments from Ingham County Judge Rosemarie Aquilina, who called him a “monster” who would “wither” in jail like the angry witch in “The Wizard of Oz.”
The state Supreme Court said Nassar’s appeal was a “precise question” and that it had “concerns” about the judge’s conduct. But the court also noted that despite her provocative remarks, Aquilina stuck to the sentencing agreement worked out by lawyers in the case.
Sisak reported from New York.
The Associated Press receives support from the General Welfare Foundation for reporting on criminal law. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
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