USA Gymnastics top leadership resigns amid sexual abuse scandal

Nancy Armour | USA TODAY

Show Caption Hide Caption Aly Raisman and Jordyn Wieber address Larry Nassar USA Gymnasts Aly Raisman and Jordyn Weiber addressed their abuser, Larry Nassar, at his sentence hearing.

The top leadership of USA Gymnastics’ board of directors resigned Monday following days of withering public criticism by women who accused Larry Nassar of sexually abusing them and the federation of being indifferent and slow to make changes that will protect young gymnasts in the future.

Chairman Paul Parilla, vice chairman Jay Binder and treasurer Bitsy Kelley submitted their resignations effective immediately. The remaining board members, which include five athlete representatives, will select an interim chair until a permanent replacement is found.

“We support their decisions to resign at this time,” Kerry Perry, who took over as president and CEO of USA Gymnastics on Dec. 1, said in a statement announcing the resignations.

“We believe this step will allow us to more effectively move forward in implementing change within our organization.”

The announcement comes as Nassar’s sentencing hearing continues in a Michigan courtroom. More than 140 girls and women, including Olympic champions Simone Biles, Aly Raisman, McKayla Maroney, Gabby Douglas and Jordyn Wieber, have said they were sexually abused by the longtime USA Gymnastics and Michigan State team physician.

The move was hailed by U.S. Olympic Committee CEO Scott Blackmun.

Blackmun and USOC chairman Larry Probst had called Parilla to USOC headquarters in Colorado Springs, Colo., on Jan. 11 and told him he needed to resign, according to two people with knowledge of the meeting who are not authorized to discuss it because of the sensitivity of the issue.

"New board leadership is necessary because the current leaders have been focused on establishing that they did nothing wrong. USA Gymnastics needs to focus on supporting the brave survivors," Blackmun said in a statement.

"The Olympic family failed these athletes and we must continue to take every step necessary to ensure this never happens again.”

Raisman has been particularly forceful in her criticism of USA Gymnastics, calling it an organization that is “rotting from the inside” during her victim statement to Nassar last week.

“To believe in the future of gymnastics is to believe in change. But how are we to believe in change when these organizations aren’t even willing to acknowledge the problem?” Raisman said in court. “It’s easy to put out statements talking about how athlete care is the highest priority. But they’ve been saying that for years, and all the while, this nightmare was happening.

“False assurances from organizations are dangerous, especially when people want so badly to believe them. They make it easier to move away from the problem and enable bad things to continue to happen. And even now after all that has happened, USA Gymnastics has the nerve to say the very same things it has said all along. Can’t you see how disrespectful that is? Can’t you see how much that hurts?”

USA Gymnastics has been criticized for not having more oversight over Nassar, who would enter athletes’ rooms unaccompanied at competitions and monthly training camps at the Karolyi ranch under the guise of treatment.

“To this day, I still don’t know how he could have been allowed to do this for so long,” Wieber said last week in court. “Nobody was protecting us from being taken advantage of. Nobody was even concerned whether or not we were being sexually abused. I was not protected, and neither were my teammates.”

Not until Biles said she didn't want to return to the Karolyi ranch, where she and several others said they were abused, did USA Gymnastics cut ties there. The federation announced Thursday it would no longer hold training camps there.

Even then, however, the federation found itself on the defensive after the the Indianapolis Star reported it still planned to hold trials for the acro world championships there next month. USA Gymnastics announced Friday that the trials would be relocated.

USA Gymnastics also has been criticized for not being more aggressive in acknowledging and addressing a culture within the sport that critics say enabled the abuse. Former CEO and president Steve Penny, who was forced to resign last month, was the only person to be held publicly accountable until Monday's resignations.

Parilla, Binder and Kelly had resisted calls that they resign, even after former federal prosecutor Deborah Daniels said board members should not serve longer than two, four-year terms.

Parilla had been on the board since 1999. Binder first joined the board in 2002 and served until 2007, then rejoined in 2009. Kelley has been on the board since November 2007.

Nassar became USA Gymnastics’ team physician in 1996, and has acknowledged abusing athletes under the guise of medical treatment. He was dismissed by the federation in July 2015, after a coach overheard athletes talking about the abusive procedure and became concerned.

But USA Gymnastics did not notify the FBI for five weeks, conducting its own investigation first. Even after it turned the case over to the FBI, it did not notify Michigan State or authorities in Michigan, despite knowing that Nassar was still working there.

The allegations against Nassar became public in August 2016, when Rachel Denhollander contacted the Indianapolis Star, part of the USA TODAY Network, and said she’d been abused by Nassar. That led to dozens more accusations, along with the revelation that athletes had reported Nassar to Michigan State as early as 1997.

Nassar has already been sentenced to 60 years in prison after pleading guilty to federal child pornography charges. He faces another 125 years after pleading guilty to state charges of sexually assaulting seven girls.

Contributing: Christine Brennan