Michigan State University is launching a broad “institutional assessment,” led by some of the sexual assault survivors and the police detective whose work together resulted in the criminal conviction and landmark sentencing of former MSU sports doctor Larry Nassar in 2018.
“It is very meaningful to be here in this place, after seven years of working in institutional health and survivor advocacy,” said Rachael Denhollander, who was the first to come forward publicly about Nassar’s abuse in 2016, in a story in the Indianapolis Star and by filing a police report with now-retired MSU deputy police chief Andrea Munford. “To be able to engage in this process with Michigan State University on a project that is so deeply meaningful is an incredibly important step.”
Denhollander and Munford will serve on a “collaborative advisory board,” along with survivors Trinea Gonczar of the Avalon Healing Center, and Sterling Riethman, a communications and policy professional. MSU psychology professor Rebecca Campbell is a researcher in gender-based violence.
The goal, Campbell said, is to publish a wide-ranging evaluation that can “achieve historical accountability,” as well as review the school’s “policies regarding relationship violence and sexual misconduct,” and “help identify areas that still need continuous improvement.”
It also could have been done years ago, said Denhollander, if the University had heeded earlier requests from survivors. “This is the process that we have been pleading with Michigan State to go on, not for our sake, but for the sake of the students that come after us,” she said.
But it’s happening now, Denhollander said, because MSU President Kevin Guskiewicz (who was hired last year) is the first president who’s been willing to do it.
“This is the exact same proposal that Sterling and I brought to the board in 2018. This was the exact same proposal that we have advocated for for the past seven years, behind the scenes over and over again. And what you really do see different, is a leader who's come in and he's taken time to sit and to listen and to learn.”
“At Michigan State University, it is our responsibility to acknowledge our history and seek opportunities for healing through our commitment to continuous improvement,” Guskiewicz said in a press release Thursday.
“To that end, we are partnering with experts who are professionals in their respective fields to identify a firm to perform an institutional assessment of our culture, structure and policies. This assessment is an opportunity to embark on a journey of historical accountability; recognize progress in prevention, support, reporting and response efforts, ensuring future policies are informed by best practices; and identify additional areas for growth and improvement.”
Nearly a decade of fallout at MSU
It’s been nine years since Denhollander’s MSU police report, and eight years since Nassar was sentenced to up to 175 years in prison, following an unprecedented court hearing in which more than 150 women and girls spoke publicly about the abuse they experienced and the role that MSU played in enabling Nassar.
The case also brought to light previous instances when reports about Nassar had been made to MSU as far back as the 1990’s, including a 2014 Title IX investigation in which the school cleared him of wrongdoing.
The University’s handling of the case, and how it has publicly and privately engaged with survivors, has varied widely. In 2017, then-president Lou Anna K. Simon told trustees it was “virtually impossible to stop a determined sexual predator and pedophile,” and resigned in 2018 shortly after Nassar’s sentencing hearing concluded. (Simon later faced charges of lying to police about the Nassar case, which a judge eventually dismissed.)
Simon was succeeded by interim president John Engler, a former Michigan governor, who reached a record-setting $500 million settlement with survivors. But Engler also resigned in 2019 after one survivor accused him of attempting to bribe her, and he made public comments about some “enjoying” the spotlight.
In 2018, MSU’s board of trustees asked then-Attorney General Bill Schuette to conduct a review of the school’s handling of the Nassar case, but then blocked the release of some 6,000 documents, claiming attorney-client privilege.
Last year, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel reopened that investigation after receiving the documents from the University. In a report, Nessel’s office said while their review of the previously-withheld documents found “no evidence of a concerted effort to cover up MSU’s knowledge of Nassar’s conduct,” the school had misused attorney-client privilege claims in some instances.
Once the documents were released, the AG’s office found “a significant number of them were not, in our opinion, properly withheld as privileged, and few of them pertained to who knew what about Nassar and when they knew it. As it relates to our investigation, the documents that did pertain to such knowledge did not reveal anything of significance that was not previously known.”
But Nessel’s office criticized MSU for waiting so long, saying it had given survivors unfounded hope “that these documents would provide answers as to how Nassar’s abuse was able to go on for so long.
“We shared that anticipation and hope—and rightly so, since MSU’s long and hard fight to keep these documents protected seemed to suggest important content that might shed light on shared accountability for Nassar’s actions. That anticipation and hope has ended with disappointment and frustration, which, in our view, could have been avoided.”
Looking ahead
The new advisory board will select “an independent firm that has the skill sets and the trauma-informed capabilities” to review what MSU’s already done, Denhollander said, and what steps remain.
The first steps, she said, will be “the listening phase and the collaborative engagement” to make sure “everybody has a voice in the process.”
“Once a firm is selected, the board will set the scope and parameters of the process and provide supervisory input over the assessment, while seeking input from the broader survivor community to create trauma-informed pathways for survivor engagement,” according to an MSU press release Thursday.
Goals include ensuring “historical accountability by acknowledging past institutional failures and assessing corrective actions,” providing a “benchmark for progress,” and identifying “gaps in prevention, support, reporting and response efforts” and making recommendations for actions.
