Last Friday, the multiple gold medal‑winning US gymnast Aly Raisman delivered an electrifyingly powerful victim statement at the sentencing hearing of the former US gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar. If you haven’t watched it, I recommend you take the time. For any 23-year-old to speak with such intensity, poise and control would be remarkable; to do so directly to her sexual abuser in a packed courtroom under the gaze of the cameras is of a radically different order.

I’m glad Raisman was so clear about having only just begun to use her power and voice, because to watch her speak is to watch someone make the most stunning of debuts into public life. She made the speech on Friday afternoon; by Saturday morning quotations from it were already on placards at the women’s marches across America.

'I signed your death warrant': Larry Nassar jailed for up to 175 years for sexual abuse Read more

And Raisman was just one of an expected 144 victims offering amazingly brave testimony. Why this unprecedented parade of women and girls didn’t lead every news bulletin and sports show is a puzzle to which we will return later. Each of their stories is at once of a terrible pattern and unique in its grotesque horrors. Donna Markham spoke for her daughter Chelsea, who began seeing Nassar after an injury at the age of 10, with the resultant abuse beginning a spiral of despair that ended in her taking her own life at 23.

Jessica Chedler Rodriguez, whose abuse began in 1997, explained that Nassar had stolen not just her childhood innocence but made her unable to leave her own daughter “to play at a friend’s house, leave her alone with her coaches or with a babysitter without experiencing constant anxiety and stress … I find myself in a position where I must rob my children of the freedom they deserve”.

Not all were gymnasts, or even patients. Kyle Stephens revealed that “family friend” Nassar began abusing her when she was six. She told her parents at 12 but Nassar convinced them she was lying, fracturing her relationship with them. Many years later her father confessed he believed her but took his own life soon after. “Little girls don’t stay little for ever,” Stephens declaimed. “They grow into strong women that return to destroy your world.”

Play Video 1:42 'Little girls don't stay little forever': abuse victims confront Larry Nassar – video

Nassar covered his eyes, as he would do with so many of the survivors to testify, despite having agreed to impact statements as part of his plea deal. Once they were under way last week, Nassar wrote a letter to the judge explaining it was “mentally” too difficult for him to have to listen to them all. The judge rejected this as “mumbo jumbo”.

She might well regard the posturings of the various sports authorities involved in this as dismissible, too. What was notable about Raisman’s speech was her intention to go after the entire culture that enabled, excused and exculpated Nassar. “Over those 30 years when survivors came forward, adult after adult – many in positions of authority – protected YOU, telling each survivor it was OK, that you weren’t abusing them. In fact, many adults had YOU convince the survivors that they were being dramatic or had been mistaken. This is like being violated all over again.” Her distaste for both USA Gymnastics and the US Olympic Committee was thermonuclear. “It’s clear now that if we leave it up to these organisations,” she stated, “history is likely to repeat itself.”

Well, I see that a full three board members of USA Gymnastics have since resigned, so … are we quits now? If USOC and Michigan State (where Nassar also worked) have anything to do with it, it looks that way. On Monday, the same USOC that declined to even investigate when media allegations against Nassar first appeared in 2016, issued a statement acknowledging the resignations, declaring “USA Gymnastics needs to focus on supporting the brave survivors”.

It has not exploded as it should have. Perhaps because gymnastics isn't football, or baseball, or basketball

That cannot be case closed. Even by the standards of sports administration – where the term “survivor” can only be used ironically for someone who has clung on to a sinecure no matter what has happened on their watch – this is terminally mealy‑mouthed. Raisman’s demand for an independent investigation must be met and she should be given every possible platform until it is.

Whether she will be is, alas, uncertain. The New York Times commendably published her testimony in its entirety but quite why the biggest, court-proven sex‑abuse scandal in the history of sport has failed to dominate sports news coverage to the exclusion of almost anything else is unclear.

In many ways, it should fit the perfect media template: multiple gold medals, survivors in many cases still competing at the very highest level and – of course – the endless shudder of the phrase “photogenic victims”. And yet, it has not exploded as it should have. Perhaps it’s because gymnastics isn’t football, or baseball, or basketball. Or perhaps it’s because the opposite of “news” is “things which are somehow to be expected”.

Less to be expected have been the constantly heroic efforts of the victims to power this story back up the news agenda. “I am here to tell you,” declared Raisman, who hopes to compete at Tokyo 2020, “that I will not rest until every last trace of your influence on this sport has been destroyed like the cancer it is.” Does she have to win the medals AND purge her sport of the most inexcusable of horrors? It seems so. She deserves our continued attention as she battles to get USOC to answer her most devastating question: “What’s it going to take for you to do the right thing?”