The man who broke the Larry Nassar story
The man who broke the Larry Nassar story
Terre one man who one man who is now in terre haute will be featured in an upcoming netflix documentary.
It's called athlete "a" it details the background behind doctor larry nassar's sexual abuse of underaged u-s-a gymnasts.
Of underaged u-s-a gymnasts.
The documentary will be released tomorrow.
News 10's dominic miranda spoke with the journalist.... who now works at indiana state.
He explains how his involvement in bringing the story to the national spotlight.
Mark alesia comes here to indiana state university every day for work.
The director of communications does a lot behind the scenes....but it wasn't always that way.
He was a well renown journalist for the indianapolis star newspaper for 16 years.
During his tenure.... he and 3 other journalists were responsible for breaking the story of doctor larry nassar.
Before his story is made for public consumption.... i spoke with alesia about his role in catching this sexual abuser.....and the lasting impact he made on usa gymnastics.
"how the heck did we get to this point?"
That's a great question.
It all began in august of 2016 the indianapolis star had just published an article...not about larry nassar...but about the systemic negligence to report abuse by usa gymnastics.
This is what caught the attention of rachel denhollander.
She's a former gymnast... and one of nassar's sexual abuse victims. but she said countless "higher ups" told her to keep quiet.
She decided to reach out to alesia and two others at the indystar to tell her story.
Then two more young women came forward with their stories of nassar...usa gymnastics...and sexual abuse.
That's when alesia and the other journalists began to understand the magnitude of what they were now in the middle of.
"i said we are on to something beyond f'd up.and we need to do everything we can to get to this.how many more could there be?
And then we found out."
Women began coming out of the woodwork....detailing their stories of sexual abuse at the hands of nassar.
Alesia told me this established a pattern of abuse.
But it also gave him confidence to continue pursuing this bombshell of a story.
Alesia says the indystar receieved a lot of pushback from usa gymnastics lawyers saying they were slandering a "quote" great man's name.
But alesia says they took their time....covered all their bases...and used the survivors' courage as motivation.
"it was really stressul and we were just so determined that we weren't going to make a mistake that would allow somebody to disparage all of this other really, really important work."
That hard work was finally rewarded.
The story came out... and pretty soon..
The nation was talking about it..
Then, in january of 2018...nassar was convicted of first degree sexual misconduct...in front of 150 of his accusers.
He was sentenced to up to 125 years in prison.
Alesia told me he's extremely proud of the hard work from he and his colleagues at the indy star... he says this upcoming film highlights the true heroes.
"the greatest part of the stry3 herm, ond e wo nd ttterermion3ty h makre tthisp eel er a com ."th den se3 again.... 'athlete a' will be available on netflix starting tomorrow.
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