“I WILL COME FORWARD”
I OPENED MY LAPTOP TO CHECK my grocery list. My two older children were running around downstairs. My baby daughter was with me. My husband, Jacob, a carpenter and a Southern Seminary graduate student, had already left.
My gaze went to a Facebook trending story: “A Blind Eye to Sex Abuse: How USA Gymnastics Failed to Report Cases,” from The Indianapolis Star.
No. The article outlined how USA Gymnastics had systematically buried reports of sexual misconduct in a filing cabinet—complaints about 54 member coaches over 10 years. I felt sick. An institution responsible for the mental and physical well-being of thousands of girls protected the coaches who had abused them. I thought of the human cost of such a betrayal, the darkness that would follow those little girls. I wanted to break down and sob.
I thought back to being 15 and sitting on the exam table in Dr. Larry Nassar’s Michigan State University office. I remembered his cheery demeanor. The way he called me kiddo. I’d trusted him because I thought. Mine would have been just another name buried in the filing cabinet.
