Page 61 - Malcolm Gladwell - Talking to Strangers

journals showing the mental anguish I had been in since the assault.…I brought a witness I had
disclosed it to…I brought the evidence of two more women unconnected to me who were also
claiming sexual assault.
The Nassar case was open-and-shut. Yet how long did it take to bring him to justice? Years.
Larissa Boyce, another of Nassar’s victims, said that Nassar abused her in 1997, when she was
sixteen. And what happened? Nothing. Boyce told the Michigan State gymnastics coach, Kathie
Klages. Klages confronted Nassar. Nassar denied everything. Klages believed Nassar, not Boyce.
The allegations raised doubts, but not enough doubts. The abuse went on. At Nassar’s trial, in a
heartrending moment, Boyce addressed Nassar directly: “I dreaded my next appointment with you
because I was afraid that Kathie was going to tell you about my concerns,” she said.
And unfortunately, I was right. I felt ashamed, embarrassed, and overwhelmed that I had talked
to Kathie about this. I vividly remember when you walked into that room, closed the door behind
you, pulled up your stool and sat down in front of me, and said, “So, I talked to Kathie.” As soon
as I heard those words, my heart sank. My confidence had been betrayed. I wanted to crawl into
the deepest, darkest hole and hide.

Over the course of Nassar’s career as a sexual predator, there were as many as fourteen occasions
in which people in positions of authority were warned that something was amiss with him: parents,
coaches, officials. Nothing happened. In September 2016 the Indianapolis Star published a
devastating account of Nassar’s record, supported by Denhollander’s accusations. Many people
close to Nassar backed him even after this. Nassar’s boss, the Dean of Osteopathic Medicine at
Michigan State, allegedly told students, “This just goes to show that none of you learned the most
basic lesson in medicine, Medicine 101.…Don’t trust your patients. Patients lie to get doctors in
trouble.” Kathie Klages had the gymnasts on her team sign a card for Nassar: “Thinking of you.”
It took the discovery of Nassar’s computer hard drive, with its trove of appalling images, to
finally change people’s minds.
When scandals like this break, one of our first inclinations is to accuse those in charge of
covering for the criminal—of protecting him, or deliberately turning a blind eye, or putting their
institutional or financial interests ahead of the truth. We look for a conspiracy behind the silence.
But the Nassar case reminds us how inadequate that interpretation is. Many of Nassar’s chief
defenders were the parents of his patients. They weren’t engaged in some kind of conspiracy of
silence to protect larger institutional or financial interests. These were their children.
Here is one gymnast’s mother—a medical doctor herself, incidentally—in an interview for
Believed, a brilliant podcast about the Nassar scandal. The woman was in the room while Nassar
treated her daughter, sitting a few feet away.
And I remember out of the corner of my eye seeing what looked to be potentially an erection.
And I just remember thinking, “That’s weird. That’s really weird. Poor guy.” Thinking, like, that
would be very strange for a physician to get an erection in a patient’s room while giving her an
exam…
But at the time, when you’re in the room, and he’s doing this procedure, you just think he’s
being a good doctor and doing his best for your child. He was that slick. He was that smooth.
In another instance, a young girl goes to see Nassar with her father. Nassar puts his fingers inside
her, with her dad sitting in the room. Later that day, the gymnast tells her mother. Here is the mother
looking back on the moment:
I remember it like it was five seconds ago. I’m in the driver’s seat, she’s in the passenger seat,
and she said, “Larry did something to me today that made me feel uncomfortable.”

And I said, “Well, what do you mean?”
“Well, he…touched me.”
And I said, “Well, touched you where?”
And she said, “Down there.” And the whole time you know what she’s saying but you’re
trying to rationalize that it can’t be that.

She called her husband and asked him if he had left the room at any time during the