After Rachael’s story came out in September 2016, police started getting more complaints about Larry.
Within two weeks, another 16 women and girls had come forward.
By November, Larry was charged with sexually abusing a child under the age of 13.
Even then, many wondered: how could the parents of these girls have been in the room while Larry abused their child – and not know it was happening?
For their part, the parents are asking themselves the same question.
They’ve seen all the comments online: how the parents are to blame; how they must have been so obsessed with their kids’ gymnastics careers that they just looked the other way.
And the moment Rachael Denhollander spoke out publicly about her abuse, their lives changed, too.
Suzanne Thomashow remembers showing her daughter, Jessica, the IndyStar article. Suzanne remembers Jessica reading it and then saying, “Mom, that’s what he did to me.”
Suzanne says, “That was when we figured it out. That was when she figured out that she’d been assaulted.”
Suzanne Thomashow has three daughters: Amanda, Katherine, and Jessica.
Suzanne’s oldest daughter, Amanda, is the one Larry assaulted in 2014. The one who reported Larry to MSU, after which MSU cleared him to go back to work.
Before any of that happened, Suzanne’s youngest daughter, Jessica, had also seen Larry for treatments.
But when Amanda told her mom Larry Nassar assaulted her, Suzanne didn’t even think to ask her daughter Jessica if Larry did anything to her.
“When Amanda was assaulted, I thought it was a singular incident,” says Suzanne. “I didn’t have any idea that this was something going on for many, many, many years and I had no idea that my other daughter had been assaulted by him.”