Three years after blowing the whistle on serial child molester Larry Nassar, the former gymnast turned attorney is continuing to lead the fight both in and beyond the world of sports

In 2016, former gymnast Rachael Denhollander filed a report with the Michigan State University police department and a Title IX complaint with the school. She alleged that Dr Larry Nassar had sexually assaulted her more than a decade earlier when she’d been his patient – and in doing so, Denhollander became the first of more than 265 women to come forward alleging abuse by Nassar.

Nassar will spend the rest of his life in prison after being convicted on charges of child pornography, sexual assault and sexual assault of minors. During a January 2018 sentencing, dozens of his victims gave impact statements in court in Michigan, facing their accuser with an array of emotions. Denollander was one of them, asking simply: “How much is a little girl worth?”

By that point, Denhollander was already one of the most vocal and best-known of Nassar’s victims; a lawyer, she’s moved into advocacy work full-time since coming forward three years ago. Denhollander’s work has expanded beyond the world of sports, though, and she’s been especially critical of the Southern Baptist Convention and the abuse within its ranks.

This week Denhollander spoke with the Guardian about her ongoing advocacy work and the progress she hopes to still see.

It’s been more than three years now since you came forward and this movement started. How do you feel about everything USA Gymnastics has done since?

Disappointed. They have completely refused any shred of transparency and accountability. They have refused to identify even one thing that went wrong. They have refused to identify even one coach that was abusive or one abusive situation, to point to something and say, hey, we shouldn’t have allowed that. And if you cannot even acknowledge the problem, you cannot fix the problem.

I get asked all the time, what’s the single most important thing we can do to combat abuse? And most of the time when people ask that question, they’re thinking policy: What policy provision do we need in place? But the single most important thing you can do [isn’t policy]. It’s to communicate that it matters, because that’s what changes the culture around you. That’s what communicates to predators that they will not be harbored and they won’t be safe. That’s what communicates to the people who would mishandle or cover up allegations of abuse that there will be consequences if they don’t report it properly. And that’s what communicates to survivors that [they’re] going to be heard and listened to, and it’s safe to speak up. If you did not communicate that, you haven’t done the most basic thing you need to start to change the culture around you.

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And I take it you don’t feel like that has happened.

They really still do believe they have a publicity problem. That’s what they’re acting like. … So it has been nothing but gross disappointment.

When it comes to the tension between policy v communication, did you always feel that communication trumped policy?

I’ve understood [that communication is what needs to change] for years and years. I think part of it is because communication is my passion: the communication of ideas and the consequence of ideas. That’s something I’ve studied and been passionate about for a long time. Even when I was starting to work through my own abuse and looking at the cultural dynamics and just trying to determine what do I do… I already had that focus on the consequences of ideas and the communication of ideas. That really is at the root of everything we do. We talk a lot about actions, but behind those actions are ideas. And if you don’t have your ideas right, the actions are not going to follow. Either they won’t be the right actions, or you’ll have the right actions on paper but no heart motivation to follow them.

Do you think, then, that there’s a misconception among the general public that this is more of a policy problem than anything else?

I think we have a significant problem in this culture with being emotionally driven by whatever is in the media cycle and then forgetting about it the next minute. I don’t think that’s unique to the issue of abuse. We’re a very soundbite-oriented culture; we’re a very celebrity-oriented culture. That often leads people to… be easily swayed by the soundbites rather than really digging into the real issue. And in addition to that, I think it does lead to a situation where people emotionally feel like they have done something [simply by feeling that abuse is bad]. But they haven’t actually done anything. We don’t like to have to dig into things and put time and effort into a battle that’s not easily won. And so I think there’s an extent where people want [talk of abuse] to go away quickly.

We don’t talk about the permanency of the damage. And the reality is that these people are never going to be who they would have been Rachael Denhollander

In terms of the organizations themselves… they really do believe that these are largely publicity problems. There’s just no understanding of trauma, of emotional abuse, verbal abuse, psychological abuse. It’s just it’s not there. The framework for understanding abuse is completely gone. But those who are in authority are intentionally not educating themselves. And chosen ignorance is the greatest form of cowardice.

Do you feel like that lack of action and understanding has created a situation where more abuse could still occur?

How much worse can it get? If this wasn’t enough, what is it going to take? I do not have any hope for those who are in leadership at USAG. I don’t have any hope for the vast majority of elite coaches who were participated in the system, who knew what was going on, who put their girls through this… and didn’t say anything. They have chosen over and over and over again an abusive framework. They’ve made that choice repeatedly. They’re not standing up and speaking out against it now. The athletes still to this day are left standing alone.

Why do you think coaches and others within leadership have come to believe that the abusive framework they employed is the only way to win or succeed?

It’s the lazy way out. You create a bunch of little girls that you can control and manipulate, who behave and perform like robots. It makes your job a whole lot easier.

I know you and others work hard to keep this story in the news. What concrete goals do you hope to achieve even as USA Gymnastics seems to refuse to make real change?

Public pressure and public outrage [drive] change. And if the public doesn’t know what’s going on, there’s nothing anybody can do about it. I would like to see a lot more productivity in the leadership. [The United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee] is a creation of statutes. [It’s] run with taxpayer dollars and with sponsor dollars. It’s time for the Senate to act… and it is time for sponsors to act. If you don’t want to be participating in a culture of abuse, don’t fund an organization that is abusing children. It’s that simple.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Kaylee Lorincz, left, embraces Denhollander after her her impact statement inside Ingham County Circuit Court in January 2018. Photograph: Networ/Sipa USA/REX/Shutterstock

Switching gears, can you take yourself back, mentally, to when you decided to speak out and realized that advocacy work could be a future. How does the reality of what that life has been like over the past few years compare with what you imagined?

I wish I could say that it’s been a surprise, that I’ve been I’ve been pleasantly surprised, [that] I thought it was going to be worse. I can’t. I really did foresee all of the difficulty and the amount of corruption uncovered in law enforcement and in these organizations across the board. I anticipated all of it.

In terms of the life shifts for me and the doors that have opened, I did not anticipate that. That has been a whirlwind. I’m deeply grateful for that. I am, but I wish it wasn’t necessary.

In terms of the difficulties involved with you role, what’s been the hardest to deal with?

My own story is still very difficult. I never wanted my sexual assault to be dinner-table conversation across the world. And just the level of graphic detail that’s out there, the photographs, the videos – I still find it very re-victimizing and very difficult.

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But in addition to that, just being immersed in all of the corruption and the evil and the pain, working with these organizations who time and time and time again turn their backs on the survivors and on the kids that are under their protection [has been difficult]. We – and rightly so – talk about the hope of healing, because there is a lot of hope. But we don’t talk about the permanency of the damage. And the reality is that these people are never going to be who they would have been. They will always fight battles that people who are not abused don’t fight. Life is always going to be more uphill for them. We need we need to grapple with that honestly. And it’s hard to do in a way that still gives hope to survivors and doesn’t make them feel like healing is hopeless.

Your advocacy work has expanded far beyond the world of gymnastics and far beyond sports, even. How did you decide to take on that role, and why was it important to you?

The doors just opened, to be honest. It was a job that needed to be done. There were many situations in other arenas that I was aware of [and that] I had a good handle on because of my legal background. I am able to communicate to a wide variety of groups just because of my background.

It was really an intentional shift. What you can do, you need to do, and do it well. [Even in arenas outside gymnastics], I have connections and perspective. In fact, some of the most vitriolic attacks I get don’t come from the gymnastics world.

Looking back over the past few years, is there one moment or piece of work you’ve done that you’ve found the most fulfilling, or that you find yourself returning to when the going is tough?

My goal is to do the best you can with what you’ve been given. [That’s] the question I ask myself at the end of the day – because a lot of times you don’t get the result you want to see. That’s just the truth.

But I think one of the most beautiful things that I’ve seen over and over again in in many spheres – not just gymnastics and sports, but in some of the church realms, and several different advocacy positions – is when I’ve had the ability to meet survivors that I’ve advocated for [who] I never expected to meet. Many of them have said to me things like, I thought everybody forgot about us. To hear that, to hear the grief in their voices, [you see that] this abuse is incredibly isolating. When you speak out against your own community – whether that’s the gymnastics community, the religious community – you lose everything that formed a sense of security for you. Usually [you lose] your close friendships, the people that you counted as family, the people who shaped you.

And [it means so much that they] know that somebody fought for them. The power of knowing that they’ve been fought for, that they matter enough for somebody to care, is huge. And the ability to be able to give that in some way shape and form to survivors… is an incredible privilege.