“I got a phone call probably the next day [from] Steve Penny,” Gina, Maggie's mom, told SI. “He called me, I don’t know how many times, to talk to me about it and make sure that I understood they were taking care of it." https://t.co/iWNLhmqYWcpic.twitter.com/ZCxXEMh1Jw
— GymCastic (@GymCastic) January 9, 2018
- Maggie Nichols was a member of the 2015 World Championships team where she was the only US gymnast to compete the all around in team final where the US won gold. She was also the bronze medalist on floor at Worlds and a frontrunner for the 2016 Olympic team until she got injured.
- Maggie is now a sophmore at Oklahoma. As a freshman she was the #1 ranked NCAA gymnast in the regular season all around, scored 7 perfect 10s (including at least one on each of the four events), and won the Super Six with her team.
- Maggie is one of the 140+ gymnasts abused by Larry Nassar and the 4th recent national team member to publicly come out as one of Nassar's victims after McKayla Maroney, Aly Raisman, and Gabby Douglas.
- Maggie started being abused by Nassar in 2013 when she was only 15. He also sent her creepy facebook messages telling her how beautiful she looked.
- It was revealed that Maggie was the first gymnast to report Nassar's abuse to USAG. Her coach, Sarah Jantzi, overheard Maggie talking to Aly Raisman about Nassar's "treatments" at the Karoyli ranch. Jantzi reported the abuse to USA gymnastics official, Rhonda Faehn, and Maggie's mom, Gina, on June 17, 2015.
- The president of USAG, Steve Penny, kept calling Gina to tell her to keep quiet and said that USAG was taking care of it and reporting it to the FBI. USAG and the USOC wanted the abuse to be kept quiet so it wouldn't jeopardize the lead up to the 2016 Rio Olympics or Los Angeles' Olympic bid.
- Maggie's parents were under the impression that the FBI was investigating it and the one interviewing Maggie, but it actually turned out to be a private investigator hired by USAG, Fran Sepler.
- At the 2016 US National Championships, Steve Penny told Gina that he wanted to let her know that her daughter Maggie was abused, but "she wasn't the worst one."
- The FBI didn't get back to the Nichols family until July 2016, a year later and days before the Olympic Trials.
- At least 19 more gymnasts were abused after Maggie reported her abuse to USAG since they didn't inform Michigan State University of the investigation and he continued working there after he was allowed to quietly retired from USAG. MSU actually had complaints about Nassar's abuse from 20 years ago and did their own investigation in 2014, but cleared him.
- Nassar plead guilty possession of child pornography and was sentenced to 60 years in prison.
Source: Twitter
Maggie is so brave to come forward with this and her coach Sarah Jantzi was the only adult who did the right thing in this situation. Burn down and decertify USAG!
Tinashe, the stunning, sultry quadruple threat of the R&B world (citation: "I Make Flopping an Art, Honey": The Biography of Tinashe Kachingwe); teased the way too patient stans with a cryptic clip and a video montage of her career.
