USA Gymnastics to Pay $425 Million to Settle Sexual Abuse Cases

To make the current plan official, all of the insurance companies involved in the settlement — including the company that insures Martha and Bela Karolyi, the former women’s national team coordinators — need to agree to fund the $425 million payout. The bankruptcy court would also have to certify the plan, and the individual victims will vote on it. A majority of the claimants would have to accept the plan, and that majority must account for at least two-thirds of the monetary settlement.

In an emailed statement on Tuesday, U.S.A. Gymnastics expressed confidence in the proposal.

“After extensive discussions, this plan has been jointly proposed by U.S.A. Gymnastics and the Committee,” U.S.A. Gymnastics said in a statement, referring to the committee of sexual abuse survivors involved in the negotiations. Many of the insurers support it as well, the federation said. “We anticipate that this plan will be confirmed later this year and greatly appreciate all parties’ efforts to get to this point.”

The current settlement offer is much lower than the $500 million Michigan State University agreed to pay the more than 300 girls and women who were abused by Nassar, a longtime employee of the university. But Rachael Denhollander, who was abused by Nassar and is a member of the survivors’ committee that helped negotiate the proposal filed in court on Tuesday, said the current plan was about more than just money.

“I will say that the survivors deserve help with their medical care, and therapy is not cheap, so I do think they deserve compensation,” she said. “But it would also be in the best interest of everyone to see actual change and reform to take place in the organization. That’s what we were hoping for. Change was our goal.”

Denhollander said that the survivors’ committee had accepted the plan only after U.S.A. Gymnastics agreed to a list of provisions geared toward reforming the organization and making the sport safer for its athletes. One calls for the establishment of a truth and justice commission, which would examine how Nassar had been able to operate in the organization for so long and molest so many athletes and would come up with ways to prevent such abuse, and the enabling of it, from happening again.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/01/sports/olympics/usa-gymnastics-payout-sexual-abuse.html