By Lindsey Smith

It’s tempting to think of Larry Nassar as a boogie man. A creep you could spot a mile away.

Trinea Gonczar (you can hear her story in Episodes 1 and 7) is here to tell you: It’s not that obvious.

“Like this case, because it’s so public and so global and so massive, people think like that could never be our doctor, that could never be our neighbor. That could never be our trainer, that could never be my friend,” Trinea said.

“The more we talked, and she started to talk about doing victim-centered investigations, it was almost like she was going to [try to] talk us into doing that,” Munford says. “And so it was just this immediate connection. Because we knew that we were focused in the same direction.

“I remember at one point [much later on in the case], we had over 100 cases by then, and [Povilaitis] saying ‘We’re going to charge them all!’ And I’m like, okay, how are we going to do that? And we didn’t care, because we wanted to make sure that no matter what happened in this case, that all of these amazing, brave girls and women would get to the outcome that they wanted… I’ve never met a prosecutor like her before.”

Povilaitis, for her part, went into that very first meeting with MSU Police hoping to convince them her office could be entrusted with the Nassar case. And she also wanted to bring investigators up to speed with her approach to assault cases.

Povilaitis says she was impressed with Munford, too. “It’s really refreshing, right, that a detective would start by believing the victim. And I think it’s kind of just assumed in every other crime. I mean, that’s one of the most frustrating parts, right? If you’re robbed, if you’re carjacked, no one’s going to question whether or not you’re honest when you come to the police department to report that crime, right?

“It’s only sexual assault that there is sometimes, unfortunately, even within the police department, this skepticism of like, why is this person saying this happened? There must be something more to the story. They’re not telling me everything.”

But as she listened to Munford lay out her view of the investigation, and walk through the steps she’d taken so far, Povilaitis realized she wouldn’t have to do any convincing.

By the end of that first meeting, Munford remembers asking, “Can we high five now?”

Trinea met Larry at the gym when her mom signed her up for a gymnastics class.

“I’m a normal person. Literally, I was just a little girl doing backflips off a couch that my mom, frankly, I think she mostly just didn’t want me to break a table,” she said.

There’s this balance, Trinea says. Plenty of others talked about this too – they’re not saying walk around paranoid of everyone. But don’t think this couldn’t happen to to you.

One of the first things an effective predator is going to do is try to figure out ways to gain a kid’s trust, or their parent’s trust.

For Larry, that meant being the understanding, gentle trainer at an otherwise high-pressure gym.

“It was not a healthy environment, I feel. Lots of just yelling and putting down and saying you’re not good enough,” Jessica Thomashow said of the gym Larry volunteered at for decades.

Jessica and lots of other survivors of Larry Nassar’s abuse, they really did look up to this guy. They trusted him.

Larry would “groom” girls and their families, giving them time, attention and gifts in ways that made him appear selfless.

Larry followed hundreds of girls on Instagram, liking and commenting about how beautiful they were in their selfies. He made jokes with his co-workers at the office that Facebook froze his account because he was friends with too many young women.

Jessica remembered an appointment right after the 2012 Olympic games.

“He asked me what my future plans were. And at that time I said, well actually I want to be just like you, I want to be a sports medicine doctor for gymnastics and then go on to be the Olympic doctor,” Jessica said.

Jessica remembered Larry smiled and fished out a little Olympic pin. He handed it to her and told her to hang onto it until she reached her goal.

Larry was really good at this. Really good at making people think he loved them. This is textbook grooming.

Jessica said there were some conversations about Larry within the tight-knit group of kids at the gym.

“Everyone would just say like, ‘He’s just touchy, like he’s a little weird,’ but no one would exactly say what they meant by that. And so for me, I thought okay, like this is, that’s just what he does. Like, it’s normal,” Jessica said.

Ellen Randall-Speckman, Brianne Randall-Gay’s mom (Episode 2) talked about this as well. Randall-Speckman thinks the fact that Brianne was not part of the gymnastics community made it easier for her daughter to report Larry’s abuse to police right away.

“Bree’s was different because she, I just took her to the doctor,” Ellen said.

Ellen was impressed by Larry, sure, but she didn’t view him as anything but a doctor.

“The vast majority of the [survivors] were in gymnastics, which is, it’s a lifestyle. It’s not just a sport, it’s their entire socialization. It’s what they do after school, on weekends,” says Randall-Speckman. “If they were to say something like, ‘the Olympic doctor touched me inappropriately,’ they’re really stepping out and maybe ostracizing themselves from everybody in their life.”

The second reason Ellen thinks Brianne’s complaint got all the way to police has to do with how she raised her kids. Ellen talked to all three of her kids, when they were really little, about what I’ll call body safety. Inappropriate touching.

Brianne remembered her mom Ellen talked to her about it all the time.

She says, “I remember always being really annoyed that my mom would be having these conversations with me. I would feel really uncomfortable, but looking back, I’m so glad that she did.”

And this one of the two big things Kyle Stephens (Episodes 3 and 8) wants you to learn from this case.

Kyle urges parents to tell their kids, plainly: You’re never going to be in trouble for being honest. No secrets.

Kyle loved a story she remembers reading about one mom who hung up posters about body safety in her kid’s bedrooms when a babysitter came over.

“I know those might be uncomfortable situations or uncomfortable conversations… but it’s a lot less uncomfortable than having to deal with the fact that your kids have been sexually abused,” says Kyle.

When Larry assaulted Brianne, she was 17. And it is different as a 17-year-old to talk to your mom or dad about this kind of thing than say, a 6-year-old, or a 9-year-old. That’s another lesson I’ve taken from this case.

Kids don’t always talk about abuse the way you might expect.

They might be embarrassed or scared or confused. The words might not come out straightforward or how you’d imagine they would. And that’s another reason that line of communication needs to be open and safe.

One night last May, I was talking to Jacob Denhollander, Rachael’s husband, in his kitchen. (You heard from Jacob briefly in Episode 5.) While he was cutting up cheese and veggies snacks for the kids, he said something that’s stuck with me.

It’s easy to condemn Larry Nassar now.

Which seems obvious.

But, the real test, he said, cuts a lot closer to home.

“When you’re sitting in your friend’s living room and she’s weeping, telling you what your dad did to her 10 years ago, what your pastor did to her… What are you going to do then?” Jacob asked.

Are you going to support the victim no matter the uncomfortable conversations? No matter how well you think you know the accused? No matter the potential costs?
It’s easy to criticize institutions when you’re outside of them and to tell them what to do, Jacob says. That’s not to say he’s planning on stopping or should stop doing just that.

But he is thinking about how these lessons may play out, long into his future.

“How am I, how am I going to ensure that I do the right thing?” he wonders. “It’s like the hippies, they all grew up to be CEOs. You know, it’s easy to be a hippie when you’re 20, 25, but then you know that the pull of power and prestige and money, it can attract anybody.”

Our first instinct, if someone were to accuse someone we love and trust, may not be to automatically believe that the worst could be true. More often, we’re apt to rationalize it. To assume there must be some misunderstanding. To disbelieve.

Jacob and the survivors in this story want you to think about these very human reactions. And they want you, and me, to consider starting by believing instead.