Trust is not a valid risk mitigator.
We watched “Athlete A”, the Netflix Documentary dedicated to the sexual abuse scandal involving the US National Gymnastics Federation (USAG) and read books this documentary was based on (references in the comments), through the lens of our respective compliance practices.
This is a documentary, distributed by Netflix, available exclusively on the Netflix platform, in 1 episode of 1 hour and 44 minutes, focusing on the scandal that erupted in 2016 following articles published by the Indianapolis Star, which culminated in 2018 with the sentencing of Larry Nassar, the National Teams’ physician, to decades of jail for sexual assaults on young female athletes. Based on the information on the movie’s website, Larry Nassar molested “at least 500” young girls over decades before being stopped.
The movie follows the team of investigative journalists of the Indianapolis Star and alternates interviews of victims, their families, lawyers, coaches and officials with images from international competitions such as world championships or the Olympics.
As a compliance professional I was struck by how relevant this scandal is to our profession: you have whistleblowers speaking up, getting ignored and/or retaliated against, policies that are allegedly followed even when they conflict with criminal law, this ends up in a trial, there are hearings in congress, executives who plead the fifth… This is very similar to a white collar case and shows how similar sexual predation is to greed.
This documentary is captivating… it is very well produced and directed. On paper, 1 hour and 44 minutes for a documentary might seem a bit long… but it feels like watching a thriller blockbuster movie. The stakes are so high and the villains so revolting… it makes you wish this story were not real… but it is. And that is what is both gut-wrenching and incredibly rich in lessons for compliance professionals. We therefore highly recommend you watch this documentary and read these books to share if you agree with our 5 lessons from this dreadful scandal.
Lesson number 1: the most inherent risks are sometimes the hardest to recognize
The risk of abuse was rampant and should have been obvious to everyone.
Girls elite gymnastics is by design a high pressure, high vulnerability environment: the stakes are extremely high (national pride and post-cold war rivalry) and rely on the shoulders of teen girls.
In addition, a basic fact of life has been ignored here: predators can be found where the preys are.
You can’t build an athletic program in which the athletes are children and not develop awareness and prevention on child molesting.
That should be the case for every activity which creates a power imbalance by design: churches, schools, sports teams, peace keeping or disaster relief operations, prisons…
Predators will try to put themselves in a position of power to prey on their victims so you will find them in these power imbalance situations.
As hard as it may be for a value-based organization to recognize that they can be used to abuse their main beneficiaries, this should be acknowledged and managed accordingly.
In this particular case the risk was not only higher than in other sports where athletes are adults, it was also completely ignored despite complaints.
Lesson number 2: take complaints seriously
The title of one of the books in our selection summarizes the mindset a compliance officer should have in this context: “Start by Believing”.
Complaints from victims were systematically swept under the rug and dismissed. The only step taken appears to have been the notification of the alleged abuser and a possible retaliation against one of first girls who complained against Larry Nassar. This, of course, had a tremendous chilling effect on victims.
Survivors whose child molesting complains were not taken seriously were victimized a second time by the system and that should always be avoided.
Lesson number 3: Trust is not a valid risk mitigator
This case is in fact very similar to the Madoff case (see our first Compliance Geeks review on this scandal). The same quote applies: “The only people who can deceive you completely are the ones you trust completely.”
Larry Nassar operated his medical practice without any supervision or oversight. He was never second guessed. The only time he was interviewed by the police following a complaint by one of his patients, he manage to convince them they were not educated enough to understand his treatment. They could have asked for a second medical opinion… they didn’t. Just like the SEC investigators did not ask for third party confirmations of Madoff’s alleged trading activity.
Just like Madoff, he was a larger than life character who had build an public profile as a benefactor of his community. Everyone wanted him to be what he pretended to be. Therefore, no one was willing to scratch the surface of his picture perfect figure.
At the end of the day, just as in the Madoff case, a healthy dose of skepticism could have avoided a lot of suffering and saved many broken lives.
Lesson number 4: you can’t hide behind a stupid or illegal policy
In the documentary, there are a lot of mentions of an internal policy by USA Gymnastics to dismiss claims if they are not supported by evidence. So a victim complaining was not enough to open an investigation.
USAG acted as if it hands were tied and it was forced to follow a policy that made no sense, as if it did not have the power to change and improve its own policy framework.
As we understand it from the documentary, this policy was even illegal as the law in some of the states involved required the organization to report complaints of sexual abuse involving minors to the authorities… which USAG did not do.
This is compliance 101 : your policy should allow you to comply with applicable law, not to infringe it.
Lesson number 5: just do what’s right, don’t try to manage your reputation
Very often, compliance in the not-for-profit sector is “sold” to management as a way to ensure your organization’s reputation will not be damaged. But focusing too much on the reputation will cloud your judgement. If you focus on the reputation, then your first move will be to hide potentially damaging activity by your people, even it means covering up wrongdoing.
Eventually, covering up abuse will catch up with you, as it did with USA Gymnastics who filed for bankruptcy and saw its entire leadership removed. So not only did these organization not stop wrongdoing and protect victims, they also eventually not protected themselves adequately while trying to protect their reputation.
And that is also the Chief Compliance Officer’s or Chief Integrity Officer’s role to make management and the Board understand that covering up misconduct or being willfully blind in the name of reputation management is potentially devastating in the long run.
Two books written by survivors:
– Jennifer Sey, first published “Chalked Upv” in 2008… so 8 years before the scandal became public : she was not molested by Nassar but suffered from the abusive culture in US elite gymnastics.
– Rachael Denhollander published “What is a girl worth?” in 2019, after Nassar’s sentencing. A personal, 1st person narrative of the long journey from the abused teenager, to the avenger leader.
I also read 2 books from investigative journalists:
– The Girls, by Abigail Pesta, published in 2019
– Start by Believing, by John Barr and Dan Murphy, published in 2020
