Michigan State University now is at the center of the sexual abuse scandal involving Dr. Lawrence Nassar, as state and federal agencies mounted investigations demanding to know what the college knew of his behavior and when, the New York Times reports. Neither the sentencing of Nassar to 40 to 175 years in prison nor the resignation of the university president a few hours later quelled the furor. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos said her department would investigate Michigan State’s role, while state legislators asked that the university provide unredacted records of its investigations of Nassar and threatened to issue subpoenas if the school did not swiftly comply. The state attorney general was preparing his own review of the university, a U.S. senator asked for congressional hearings, and the speaker of the Michigan House called for the resignations of the university’s trustees, who are elected by voters.
“This is one of the biggest scandals in the history of our state,” said the speaker, Tom Leonard, a Republican. “We are dealing with a Big Ten university. We are dealing with a monster who was a serial child molester and rapist who may have violated more victims than any other rapist in the history of our state.” Michigan State officials are facing the prospect of legal judgments and fees from lawsuits filed by dozens of victims. At Penn State, where a former football coach was found to be a serial child molester, those costs have reached nearly a quarter of a billion dollars. The lawsuits and the legislative inquiries center on what Michigan State knew about Nassar’s behavior during the two decades he worked there. Several victims said they told Michigan State employees, as far back as the late 1990s, about being molested under the guise of treatment.