Former USA Gymnastics president and chief executive Steve Penny asserted his Fifth Amendment rights Tuesday rather than answer questions about Larry Nassar in a hearing on Capitol Hill. He was questioned by members of a Senate subcommittee investigating the former longtime Olympic gymnastics team physician and convicted child molester’s rampant sexual abuse of girls and women.
In response to questions from Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kansas, Penny, who resigned in March 2017, confirmed his employment dates and then repeatedly read from a statement explaining that his attorney had advised him to plead the Fifth. As Penny left the hearing of the Senate Commerce subcommittee, a woman in the audience stood and screamed, “Shame!”
Penny has drawn criticism from Nassar victims and their attorneys for his handling of a June 2015 report that three gymnasts had expressed discomfort with Nassar’s techniques, which included an allegation he massaged a gymnast near her groin for a knee injury. Rather than report Nassar immediately to law enforcement, USA Gymnastics commissioned an internal investigation for five weeks, and then contacted the FBI’s Indianapolis field office in July 2015. USA Gymnastics ended its relationship with Nassar, who treated national team members as a volunteer, but no one informed Michigan State, where he worked full-time and performed treatment on university athletes and local gymnasts at a campus clinic for another year.
The FBI’s investigation languished for reasons the bureau has never publicly explained, and Nassar continued to treat women and girls at Michigan State until August 2016, when a former gymnast filed a police report and then told her story of abuse to the Indianapolis Star.
Nassar, 54, is serving an effective life sentence which includes a 60-year term for federal child pornography crimes and a 40- to 175-year sentence for assaulting nine girls and women in Michigan. More than 330 girls and women have alleged he abused them, often under the guise of medical treatment, at a Michigan State campus clinic, at local gymnasiums, and at national and international gymnastics competitions, including the Olympics. Last month, Michigan State agreed to pay $500 million to settle lawsuits brought by Nassar victims. The United States Olympic Committee, USA Gymnastics, and former Olympic gymnastics coaches Martha and Bela Karolyi are among those still facing lawsuits over Nassar’s abuses.
After Penny departed the hearing, his attorney, Robert J. Bittman, released a statement.
“Mr. Penny has devoted his professional life to promoting the development of athletes at all levels in a safe and positive environment,” Bittman wrote. “He is repulsed by Larry Nassar’s crimes, and he feels nothing but compassion for the victims of those crimes. Today, on the advice of his attorney, Mr. Penny declined to testify before the subcommittee while the matters that attempt to wrongly shift blame for Nassar’s crimes remain open.”
