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Justice Department settles with Larry Nassar victims for $138.7 million
By Will HobsonOne of the largest of its kind in the history of Justice Department, the settlement brings to a close the last major legal case over Nassar’s prolific abuses, which occurred over a span of decades at international sporting events including the Olympics, as well as at Michigan State University, where Nassar worked, and at local gymnastics centers in Michigan and around the country.
Once well-respected in elite gymnastics circles for his association with Team USA, Nassar committed hundreds of alleged assaults over the years, often under the guise of medical treatment. Members of multiple U.S. Olympic gymnastics teams have alleged abuse by Nassar, including Simone Biles, Aly Raisman, and McKayla Maroney.
Nassar, 60, is serving an effective life sentence for federal convictions relating to possession of child pornography, as well as state convictions for sexual assaults of patients under his care.
A 2021 Justice Department inspector general’s report found that FBI agents in both the Indianapolis and Los Angeles field offices failed to adequately respond to allegations against Nassar raised in 2015 and 2016.
In Indianapolis, the report found, one top FBI official overseeing the investigation also was applying for a job with the U.S. Olympic Committee at the time, and later lied to the inspector general’s office about the situation. In Los Angeles, the report found, agents failed to alert local authorities in any of the places where Nassar continued to treat young gymnasts while he was under investigation.
More than 70 girls and women later alleged in court filings that Nassar assaulted them between 2015 and when he was arrested in November 2016.
FBI Director Christopher A. Wray publicly apologized to Nassar’s victims, and the bureau fired an agent in the Indianapolis office involved with the case.
In a news release Tuesday, the department said it had agreed to pay $138.7 million to resolve 139 legal claims over its handling of the Nassar case.
“For decades, Lawrence Nassar abused his position, betraying the trust of those under his care and medical supervision while skirting accountability,” acting Associate Attorney General Benjamin C. Mizer said in a statement. “These allegations should have been taken seriously from the outset. While these settlements won’t undo the harm Nassar inflicted, our hope is that they will help give the victims of his crimes some of the critical support they need to continue healing.”
Tuesday’s announcement brings the total sum paid out by institutions to Nassar’s victims over his abuses to nearly $1 billion. In 2018, Michigan State agreed to pay $500 million to more than 330 victims. And in 2021, the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee agreed to pay $380 million to hundreds of Nassar’s victims.
John Manly, attorney for more than 100 of the women involved with the Justice Department settlement, said in an interview that the settlement will bring closure to his clients, but still falls short of the criminal charges they wanted to see against the agents involved.
“For many of these families, knowing that the premier law enforcement agency in the U.S. knew their child was being treated by a child molester and did nothing for the better part of two years will always trouble them,” Manly said.
In 2021, after victims including Biles and Maroney offered emotionally wrenching testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee, the Justice Department agreed to review its decision to not criminally charge two FBI agents from the Indianapolis office accused of making false statements by the inspector general. But the review concluded with the department again deciding not to charge the agents.
The Justice Department previously has agreed to pay similar sums to victims of mass shootings where federal agencies faced accusations of negligence.
Last year, the Justice Department agreed to pay $144.5 million to the families of 26 people killed in a 2017 mass shooting in Texas, resolving allegations of failures involving the federal government’s gun background check system. In 2021, the department struck a $130 million settlement with 40 survivors and families of a 2018 shooting at a high school in Parkland, Fla. over accusations the FBI failed to investigate tips that preceded the massacre.
Tuesday, April 23, 2024
AMEN!
“Everything that I know about play suggests that if you take play away from children, there’s going to be negative consequences,” said Gray, whose 2013 book “Free to Learn” argued that free play is the primary means by which children develop resilience.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2024/04/22/metro/depression-teens-social-media-free-play-childhood/
In a recent paper, published in The Journal of Pediatrics late last year, Gray and his colleagues made the case by drawing from a voluminous body of evidence spanning developmental psychology, neuroscience, evolutionary biology, and other fields. While it may be true that the prevalence of anxiety, depression, and suicide among children and teenagers appears to have risen in tandem with the use of smartphones and social media, they concluded that teen and child mental health has actually been on the decline for at least five decades. That period coincides with the decline in opportunities “for children and teens to play, roam, and engage in other activities independent of direct oversight and control by adults,” they wrote.
Procrastination, in its weird way, is part of the process. Dawn Raffel
Procrastination, in its weird way, is part of the process. While I’m procrastinating, I’m never really free of the task; I’m turning the creative problem over and over in my mind, consciously and unconsciously, reformulating the terms. At some level I am saying no to the easy, knock-it-out solution, the tired-and-true, the familiar. Dawn Raffel
Monday, April 22, 2024
Glitch!
Peter's wife Nancy signed the title in the wrong spot, where it says
Lien Holder. Luckily the RI DMV lady was nice and said, "We have a remedy
for everything." Then she gave me the remedy form and used glow marker
to indicate where we had to sign.
"Okay, so she and I only sign where the
glowy lines are?" I asked, smiling. She said yes and smiled back, and then said, "Tell her to explain the
error here."
"Oh, could YOU explain the error there for her, please?" She did. "Thank you!"
Later my husband noticed her big loopy handwriting, and also that she had spelled "lien" wrong, but hopefully that won't be another glitch!
I got the bright idea to have us drive over to Nancy's house since Peter
was at work and his phone was overloaded with messages when I tried calling him. I knew that Nancy wouldn't answer the door, but Nancy's sister Linda knows me and lives next door to
Peter and Nancy.
I rang Linda's bell. Luckily she was home. I told her about the glitch while apologizing for disturbing her. I showed her where Nancy needed to sign. She took the paper over to Nancy and was able to get the signatures.
Back home I was able to get an early DMV appointment for tomorrow, right when they open. So I'm feeling pretty LUCKY! We texted Sam our mechanic and I will phone him when I have the plates in my hands! Fingers crossed!
Natalie Goldberg
If you read good books, when you write, good books will come out of you. Maybe it’s not quite that easy, but if you want to learn something, go to the source. Basho, the great seventeenth-century Haiku master said, “If you want to know about a tree, go to the tree.” If you want to know poetry, read it, listen to it. Let those patterns and forms be imprinted in you. Don’t step away from poetry to analyze a poem with your logical mind. Enter poetry with your whole body. Dogen, a great Zen master, said, “If you walk in the mist, you get wet.” So just listen, read, and write. Little by little, you will come closer to what you need to say and express it through your voice. Natalie Goldberg
Sunday, April 21, 2024
“I believe in books that do not go to a ready-made public, I’m looking for readers I would like to make. To win them, to create readers rather than to give something that readers are expecting. That would bore me to death.” ― Carlos Fuentes 12 likes Like “Originality' is the sickness of modernity that wishes to see itself as something new, always new, in order continually to witness its own birth. In doing so, modernity is that fashionable illusion which only speaks to death” ― Carlos Fuentes, Aura
“The contract between the author and the reader is a game. And the game . . . is one of the greatest invetions of Western civilization: the game of telling stories, inventing characters, and creating the imaginary paradise of the individual, from whence no one can be expelled because, in a novel, no one owns the truth and everyone has the right to be heard and understood.” ― Carlos Fuentes, Myself with Others: Selected Essays
Live free or Die is going for Die
As New Hampshire’s state epidemiologist, Dr. Benjamin Chan, said during a state Senate hearing on the bill, “as vaccination levels decrease, this is putting our children and our communities and our childcare agencies at risk.” Article
Saturday, April 20, 2024
Friday, April 19, 2024
Bernon Family YMCA Franklin MA
The staff at Bernon Family YMCA in Franklin MA are AMAZING. I switched my membership and joined their branch in December.
I have enjoyed my interactions with every staff member at the place. Today I arrived to swim and realized my swimsuit and towel were
not in my bag. I had left them home in Woonsocket. I turned around and
as I was leaving I told Krystina the Aquatics Director about my error
and she remedied the situation on the spot. She brought me to her office
and generously loaned me her adjustable red lifeguard bathing suit and
purple towel. KRYSTINA is THE BEST!! And All of the staff are excellent and go the extra mile. I am so grateful to experience a well run YMCA with attentive smart staff members. The postive vibes affect all of us who use the facility.
Tortilla Soup Gloop
My defrosted leftover blackbean pulled pork carrot cabbage soup became tortilla soup gloop because I added strips of corn tortillas, a can of crushed tomatoes a block of cheddar crumbled, frozen corn, a pound of frozen spinach, water, salt, olive oil, Chipotle sauce, chopped red onion and it is yummy!
peace and purpose and balance are deeply worthwhile
Life is absurd. But there is one meaningful thing, one inarguable thing, and that is that there is suffering. Fine writing helps alleviate that suffering – and anything that puts meaning and beauty into the world in the form of story, helps people to live with more peace and purpose and balance, is deeply worthwhile.
ROBERT McKEE