A former US national gymnastics team doctor, who was sentenced to up to 175 years for sexually assaulting young athletes has been stabbed multiple times in prison.
Larry Nassar was reported to be in a stable condition in hospital after he was attacked by another inmate at a prison in Florida. He was injured in the chest, back and neck.
In one of the biggest abuse scandals in US sporting history, Nassar was sentenced in 2018 to a minimum of 40 years and a maximum of 175 years in prison. More than 160 girls and women gave testimony about the impact of assaults on their lives.
Nassar admitted to sexually assaulting athletes while he worked with the USA Gymnastics programme and Michigan State University. He also pleaded guilty to possessing child pornography.
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During victim impact statements in 2018, several athletes testified that over the course of Nassar’s more than two decades of sexual abuse, they had informed adults, including coaches and trainers, but nothing was done.
Last year US Olympic gold medalist Simone Biles and dozens of other women, who said they were sexually assaulted by Nassar, initiated legal action in which they sought more than $1 billion collectively from the FBI for failing to stop the sports doctor after first receiving allegations about him.
In a report released in July 2021, the US Department of Justice inspector general found that senior FBI officials had failed to properly investigate serious allegations of sexual abuse against Nassar.
The report said civil court filings showed that about 70 women and girls were abused by Nassar between the time the FBI was first told of the allegations, and when he was later arrested by officials in Michigan on the basis of separate information.
Violent attacks
The Associated Press in the US on Monday reported that the prison in Florida where Nassar was serving his sentence was experiencing staff shortages and officers were working compulsory overtime shifts.
Insufficient personnel is a problem affecting the prison service in many parts of the United States.
The stabbing of Nassar on Sunday is the latest in a series of violent attacks and suicides in US prisons in recent years.
Last month Theodore Kaczynski, the so-called Unabomber, who killed three people and injured 23 in a series of bombings from 1978 to 1995, killed himself in a prison medical facility in North Carolina.
An inspector general’s report last month found that sex offender Jeffrey Epstein had been able to take his own life while in federal custody in 2019 due to significant staff failures.
In 2018 former Boston gang leader Whitey Bulger was beaten to death in prison in West Virginia.
