Larry Nassar and the Impulse to Doubt Female Pain
As a freshman on the Michigan State University softball team, Tiffany Thomas Lopez went to Larry Nassar, the school sports therapist, for back pain. Nassar’s “special treatment”—a technique he’s used on many of his patients, including U.S. Olympic gymnasts—involved him inserting his fingers into her vagina. Thomas Lopez thought something seemed off. But when she reported the behavior to Destiny Teachnor-Hauk, an MSU athletic trainer, she said Teachnor-Hauk told her not to worry: This was “actual medical treatment.”
“She brushed me off, and made it seem like I was crazy,” Thomas Lopez told ESPN.
Last week, almost 100 women stories about Larry Nassar in a county courtroom in Lansing, Michigan. Many of them were MSU students—and, according to, at least six reported the abuse to university administrators. All said they received versions of the same response: “He’s an Olympic doctor.” “No way.” You “must be misunderstanding what was going on.” A 2014 Title IX investigation reached a similar conclusion: Nassar’s conduct “was not of a sexual nature.” Kristine Moore, the university’s Title IX investigator, said the women likely did not the “nuanced difference” between proper medical procedure and sexual abuse.
