'The Hidden History of the Pelvic Exam': Larry Nassar and the National Nightmare (trigger warning)
(May all involved in this horror receive everything they deserve)
‘The Hidden History of the Pelvic Exam’: Larry Nassar and the National Nightmare (trigger warning)
PUBLISHED 10/25/2024 by Wendy Kline
The 2000 USA women’s gymnastics team accepts their bronze medals on Aug. 11, 2010, in Hartford, Conn. Team members included Amy Chow, Jamie Dantzscher, Dominique Dawes, Kristin Maloney, Elise Ray and Tasha Schwikert. (Gary Hamilton / Icon SMI / Icon Sport Media via Getty Images)
This excerpt is from the first chapter of my new book, Exposed: The Hidden History of the Pelvic Exam. Here, I emphasize the importance of stigma when it comes to the pelvic exam. It’s an awkward procedure in part because of the question of impropriety. When is it OK to touch a person’s genitals? Stories in the media remind us that it is a procedure easily abused or misconstrued, with devastating consequences.
Larry Nassar, the former doctor for the U.S. women’s gymnastics team, was sentenced to up to 175 years in prison in 2018 after over 250 women accused him of sexual assault. Nassar is not representative of the majority of medical professionals who perform pelvic exams—but his story serves as a warning of how easy it is for pelvic violence to happen under the façade of medical treatment. Nassar got away with sex crimes precisely because of the stigma surrounding reproductive healthcare. Without a common language to articulate what should be going on down there, it makes it harder to identify what shouldn’t.
In September of 2000, Tasha, a 15-year-old gymnast, called her mother from Sydney, Australia, with some exciting news. Three weeks earlier, she was not Olympic-bound; she had not been placed in the Olympic trials. But, shortly after the trials, she received a call from Béla Károlyi who asked her to be an alternate. She flew down to his ranch to train, then directly to Sydney. And now, after a member of the team withdrew with injuries, she wouldn’t just be on the sidelines; she was officially competing. Her mother, Joy Schwikert, answered the call from work—at the craps table at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, where she worked as the first-ever female craps dealer, along with Tasha’s father, Shannon Warren. Joy high-fived the other dealers in the pit, and the shouting “echoed off the slot machines.” The U.S. Olympic Committee had funds to fly one parent over, but not both, so the workers at Caesar’s took up a collection to fly her father and younger sister Jordan (also a gymnast) as well. Though they didn’t have any more money than the Schwickerts, “everyone wanted me to see my daughter at the Olympics,” her father said.
. . . . .
Tasha Schwikert unwittingly entered the ranch at one of its most intense times. “We were all so broken down and injured,” remembered Jeannette Antolin, who was a member of the U.S. national team from 1995 to 2000. “No one was taking care of their bodies. We were all malnutritioned. Most of us had eating disorders at the time. Most of us were being abused by Larry and not knowing it.” Schwikert joined the ranks of the abused after an injury she believes was caused by Béla. She and her teammates were busy performing elevated splits, propping their front legs “up on a stack of mats so they can extend beyond 180 degrees.” Béla would forcibly push down on the shoulders of a gymnast who didn’t appear as flexible, forcing her legs closer to the ground. When he pushed Schwikert, she felt unbearable pain, and the next day she found she could barely walk, and was sent to Larry Nassar for treatment (she would eventually be diagnosed with a partially torn tendon in her groin). It was a treatment like none other she had experienced. “He massaged and penetrated me vaginally with his bare hands, claiming it was a medical treatment that would loosen my muscles,” she explained. She didn’t question it and she didn’t resist. “I trusted him because he was a respected doctor.” She didn’t understand that what he was doing was wrong; she didn’t know about sexual abuse, and had “no experience with boys or sex.” Years later, as she put the pieces together, she saw things differently. “Now my whole Olympic experience is clouded by the fact I saw Larry Nassar four times a day.”
. . . . .
Like Tasha, she knew nothing about sexual abuse. “I had always thought of it as something more violent, like a rapist holding you down, not something your doctor would do while pretending to help you.” Like so many Nassar survivors, it wasn’t until the story broke in the news that Jordan recognized that the “treatment” she’d received was so similar to what others described. “That’s when it all came to light. His hand had been in my vagina, and not for medical reasons. I felt disgusted.” At first she wanted to block it out, but as the scandal grew, she finally went to Tasha, to reveal her secret. “We were both surprised to hear that it had happened to the other. It was a hard conversation to have.” On Oct. 29, 2018, they filed civil suits against both the United States Olympic Committee and USA Gymnastics.
https://msmagazine.com/2024/10/25/larry-nassar-pelvic-exam-sexual-assault-violence-women-rape-doctor/