“I just signed your death warrant”: At the Heart of Gold, by Erin Lee Carr, delivers a candid, unsettling look at the USGA scandal

Near the end of At the Heart of Gold: Inside the USA Gymnastics Scandal, a documentary by filmmaker Erin Lee Carr, Judge Aquilina looks Nassar in the eye and hands him what amounts to a death sentence. Released in 2018, the documentary includes interviews with many of the victims and covers the end of the trial.  By the time most viewers watch the film, they know the outcome, the sadness, the sentence. The documentary doesn’t surprise with those results. What’s still to be gained by watching it is a better understanding of the circumstances that made it possible for something so bad, to happen for so long, to so many people. To prevent them from ever happening again.

Armchair Expert Episode 109 – an interview with filmmaker Erin Lee Carr

I can remember exactly where I was when I heard Dax tell Erin that what shook him the most about her film, was learning that one of the victims’ dads killed himself. He hadn’t believed his daughter’s story about what was happening and when he learned the terrible truth, couldn’t bare the pain.  I listen to AE while driving or walking; for this episode I was walking through a neighborhood near my house and abruptly stopped when I heard this. Living in Michigan, you couldn’t avoid coverage about the crimes. It stayed in the national and our local news cycles a long time; people talked about it for months.  But I hadn’t heard that tragic fact (or some of the more awful details of the case) and it stopped me short. I said, “Oh my God” and paused the episode for a minute. This is the power of really compelling interviews, episodes, this podcast. As hard as it was to hear, it made me realize, I felt like I needed to watch the film to learn more, even though I thought I’d heard everything.

The first  part of the film reveals some elements of the business of gymnastics. And make no mistake, it’s a business — described by one interview subject as a “money machine.” One interview subject explains that many years ago, most gymnasts were women more than 20 years old. It’s only in relatively recent history, that the athletes got much younger and much smaller.

During an introduction to one of the training programs, parents are told, “100% of your children will be injured.” The film shows how the athletes are expected to perform “without complaint.” They’re described as and treated like soldiers and expected to demonstrate a level of bravery and grit that’s not natural for children of 11, 12, 13 years old.  But there’s an understanding among the athletes, their parents and coaches that top performers are likely to peak at 15 or 16. 

The young women in the film are awe inspiring in their strength, their power, their passion. They pursue this dream at great sacrifice and cost, willingly giving up a good chunk of their childhood to pursue a goal with astronomical odds against success. The girls describe the mastery of their moves this way:  “Having a command over your body.” “Doing things other people can’t do.” “It’s flying.” They recognize too, that it’s all the more exhilarating because they’re women. 

Carr also interviewed women who remember Nassar as “awesome.” “We considered him our friend.” “We loved him.” The fact was, he was well liked and admired by both athletes and parents.  If you saw Larry Nassar, you were seeing the best doctor in the nation, if not the world, for the sport of gymnastics. Working with Nassar, there seemed to be a chance his care might help you get to the Olympics and defy the odds.

It was the perfect world for a child predator, but I think it’s only possible that it went on as long as it did because of the people and systems in place that fostered it.

One interview subject’s reaction when she heard the allegations wasn’t, “That’s impossible.” Instead, she admits it was, “Please let it not be true.” The film makes it clear that many people knew long before the crimes came to light.  Incidents were reported as early as 1997 but not investigated. 

Watching the film, you’re left with an enormous curiosity about, but no sympathy for those people around him – employees at Michigan State University, the USGA and the Karolyis, who ran the national team training center in Texas. Together these people, processes and institutions served to make it all possible. For more than 20 years. Some were prosecuted. Some lost jobs. Some are still pending trials and legal action. I’d like a chance to ask every one of them, “What could you have been thinking? What do you tell yourself now?”

You learn from the film that parents (both moms and dads) were often in the room during the  exams. And in fact, the athletes did often leave with relief from the pain in their muscles and joints — those parts of their bodies they were strengthening to use as gymnasts. Can we expect girls as young as 11 or 12, with dreams they’re willing to suppress any expression of pain to achieve, to question whether “the best doctor” – a man they know, trust and like – should be placing his fingers inside them? With mom or dad a few feet away during the exam? The film reveals that at times Nassar had an erection during the exams, clearly distinguishing this as abuse rather than an actual medical procedure, but you can understand why neither the athletes nor their parents saw that. 

As a parent, this is the toughest part for me to get my head around.  Could a few of the girls — shy, lacking confidence, or knowledge about their genitals, yet so smart and sure of the ability they were developing as athletes – not trust their instincts that a doctor shouldn’t be touching them this way? And tell their parents. A few maybe. But hundreds?

Unlike Erin Lee Carr’s other recent documentary I Love You, Now Die,that’s told through two “voices” and elicits debate about the dichotomy of people who may act both bad and good, At the Heart of Gold leaves no doubt about Nassar’s role in the ruin. 

I watched the film with my sister (we both graduated from MSU in the early 80s), a recent college grad who attended a university outside of Michigan, and a young man and a young woman – a student athlete herself – currently attending colleges outside Michigan.  We were prepared to be very sad and very mad. But even after all the months of coverage, and the new details revealed in the film, we still came away extremely unsettled about how this really could have happened.

It may take years before people don’t think about this when Michigan State is mentioned. You can sometimes sense in social situations, when the university comes up, that the scandal hovers just below the surface of conversations but is too sad to talk about. 

The outcome for Nassar

He’s serving a 60-year federal prison sentence on three child pornography charges and 40-175 years on seven sexual assault charges. Weeks after the initial sentencing, another county circuit court judge sentenced him to 40-125 years in prison on three sexual assault charges. This  monster is going nowhere. 

 “I just signed your death warrant.”  This thorough, well researched and crafted, can’t watch/can’t not watch film, leaves you with the feeling that while likely true, this isn’t punishment enough. There’s simply no satisfying ending for a story that involves this much tragedy.

Updates since the film was released

The impact of this case reached far and wide and continues to have consequences.

Judge Aquilina – Nassar is appealing his sentences and his attorneys are seeking to have Judge Aquilina disqualified from his case.  But Chief Circuit Court Judge Richard Garcia ruled in August 2018, strongly defending Aquilina and criticizing Nassar.  

“The judge who heard these survivors is the only one who should properly render any re-sentence,” he said.

MSU President Lou Anna Simon – Simon served as president of Michigan State University from 2005 to 2018. She was forced out under heavy criticism of how her administration handled the Nassar case.  She still faces four criminal charges, including two felonies, because investigators say she lied to police about when she knew about a sexual assault related to the Larry Nassar scandal. 

She will retire from MSU on August 31 with an agreement that she’ll get three annual salary payments totaling $2.45 million. The agreement also spells out that Simon will be recognized for her service to the university, but it does say the school would take down her official photo if she’s convicted of a felony

US Congress — Last month, the results of a Congressional report were published, finding a large number of people and organizations — including the FBI — either covered up or took no action against the former team physician. The report found that not only had the U.S. Olympic Committee, USA Gymnastics and MSU all failed to protect the athletes, but so did the FBI. 

The report outlines the findings of an 18-month investigation by members of the Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Manufacturing, Trade, and Consumer Protection. It’s accompanied by proposed legislation to improve oversight and prevent future abuse. The legislation would allow Congress, among other things, to dissolve the U.S. Olympic Committee if it failed to protect athletes.

Let’s hope that in the future, all the organizations and people who could have prevented this, honor Rachael Denhollander, the first woman to publicly accuse Nassar, and the poignant plea in her court remarks to “do it better next time.”