opinion

Putnam: She told MSU about a 1985 rape, so Interim President Engler called her

Disgust over Michigan State University’s handling of Larry Nassar nearly caused Amy Guild McGraw to step down as president of the 2,600-member South Florida Spartans, a Michigan State University alumni group.

The sentencing of Nassar, the disgraced MSU sports doctor who pleaded guilty to criminal sexual assault of his patients, triggered painful memories for McGraw.

As a freshman, McGraw said she was raped in a room inside her on-campus residence hall. At the time, she didn’t report it to police.

But when she told MSU about it last week, she got a response, including a 45-minute phone call from Interim President John Engler. Now she's starting to see how her beloved university might recover from the sex-abuse scandal.

Back in 1985, she had been drinking and partying with a group at her dorm. Suddenly she was alone with her attacker. Looking back, she suspects the rapist put a drug in her drink. McGraw recalls one detail vividly: She looked at her hand during the assault and was unable to make a fist, she said in an interview.

McGraw didn’t seek medical help until the next day. At Olin Health Center, a nurse’s questions — wrongly, she now realizes — discouraged her from reporting it. McGraw had showered, washing evidence away. She had no bruises. The nurse thought it would be a he said/she said situation. So McGraw shoved it aside and didn’t talk about it for more than 30 years.

McGraw had always thought her treatment at MSU was an exception. Then, listening to the young women and girls give their statements about the impact of Nassar’s abuse on their lives she began to wonder: Has MSU’s culture always been to protect the university over sexual assault victims?

“They reawakened something in me that I didn’t realize I still harbored,” she said.

Feeling sick about MSU

McGraw said she began to pack away her MSU items — T-shirts, sweat shirts and pillows. She didn’t want to be reminded about being a Spartan.

“I really began to get this sick feeling about Michigan State,” she said

Since her graduation in 1989, she’s been an avid Spartan fan. She left the state in 2011 and moved to Fort Lauderdale, where she is vice president of marketing for a credit union. There she got active in the alumni group as she missed the camaraderie of other Spartans.

But since Nassar’s sentencing hearings, McGraw has struggled.

“My own persona was wrapped so tightly with Michigan State as a third-generation Spartan, I couldn’t just cut it out of me,” she said.

She was pondering leaving the alumni group when someone sent her an article by Crowley Sullivan, “Michigan State, You Broke My Heart,” printed in College Football News.

In it, Sullivan encourages Spartans to accept that the tragedy occurred and that MSU officials handled it horribly, then move forward to be part of the solution.

McGraw decided to take that advice.

“He absolutely captured how I felt. I thought to myself, 'This is an opportunity to not turn away from Michigan State but to help them be better.' I was in a position as a past victim to help guide them,” she said.

First she had to tell her husband of 13 years about the rape.

She recalls she had a drink resting on a Michigan State coaster. As they spoke, he reached over, lifted her glass, and turned the coaster upside down to hide the MSU logo.

“He never knew this happened to me. That was one of the hardest things I had to do was tell him,” she said.

After that, she went public with her story on Feb. 6, emailing the 2,600 members and copying the MSU Board of Trustees, the Alumni Association and interim President John Engler.

Scott Westerman, executive director of the Michigan Alumni Association, said that under a 2-year-old policy, all MSU employees are mandated to report any assault. He reported it to the MSU Police and to the Office of Institutional Equity, which investigates sexual assaults in addition to the campus police.

McGraw said she got emails from OIE – a cold form letter, she observed -- and a warmer response from MSU Police. She said there appears to be little reason to pursue such a cold case without evidence and even without a suspect’s long forgotten name.

Engler calls her

But what floored McGraw was a voicemail Friday from Engler, a former GOP governor who has been widely criticized as a poor choice for interim president. He left her his personal cell phone number because he didn’t yet know his office number. It would have been Engler’s fifth day on the job.

McGraw, a Democrat, called Engler back the next day, Saturday, and they spoke for 45 minutes.

“This is a man that I want to say is different than the man I knew as governor ... maybe it’s because he has parented three daughters,” she said. Engler has 23-year-old triplet daughters who were born while he was in office.

McGraw said she told Engler about the OIE's email, and he asked for a copy. She suggested edits. She also encouraged Engler to engage students as part of the solution.

She was impressed.

“This was a dad, a very real caring human being. He wanted me to keep in touch and let him know what the alumni in South Florida had to say.”

Westerman said the staff at the alumni association has been in listening mode, taking in comments from alumni expressing disbelief, anger, grief, frustration, concern and confusion. The association is encouraging chapters to express support of the women and girls assaulted by Nassar.

Though McGraw considered it, Westerman said no leaders have stepped down from alumni groups. About 250 people asked to be removed from mailing lists the past month, about the usual amount, he said.

But he did verify reports that fundraising dropped 25% in the last half of 2017, perhaps influenced by Nassar.

“We are in uncharted waters. This is something that’s never happened to us to this magnitude,” Westerman said.

McGraw has pulled her Spartan gear out of storage. She said she hopes MSU will become the gold standard for safe campuses.

She's willing to use her own painful experience to help make that happen.

Judy Putnam is a columnist with the Lansing State Journal. Contact her at (517) 267-1304 or at jputnam@lsj.com. Follow her on twitter @judyputnam.