As sexual misconduct continues to dominate the news, our gender team is providing updates and analysis in a new newsletter. Today, Carla Correa, a digital news editor who has covered gymnastics for The Times, writes on the case of Larry Nassar, the former U.S.A. Gymnastics team doctor sentenced to a lifetime in prison for sexual assaulting his patients. Sign up here to receive future installments, and tell us what you think at nytgender@nytimes.com.



I had long adored gymnastics, but my parents did not have the money, nor I the fearlessness, for the sport. I did a flip or handstand every now and then, but mostly followed women’s gymnastics from afar.

And yet it didn’t take long for me to learn about the dark underbelly of the sport, the one that commentators do not share on air: that some coaches and adults had created what Valorie Kondos Field, the head coach of the women’s team at U.C.L.A., called a “culture of abuse.”

This week that culture was laid bare as Lawrence G. Nassar, the former American gymnastics and Michigan State University doctor, was sentenced to a lifetime in prison for molesting girls as young as 6, most under the guise of medical treatment. It was the culmination of a seven-day hearing that included gut-wrenching statements by more than 150 women, with a judge who allowed any victim to speak for as long as she wished. Some came forward only after hearing teammates share what they once thought was unspeakable.