Fierce Five have now all accused Larry Nassar of sexual assault
With 2012 Olympic gymnast Kyla Ross having revealed on Thursday that she, too, was sexually assaulted by 55-year-old disgraced former USA Gymnastics and Michigan State University physician Larry Nassar, all five members of the gold medal-winning 2012 United States women's Olympic gymnastics team, also known as the "Fierce Five", have accused Nassar of sexual assault.
McKayla Maroney was the first to do so in October of 2017. Aly Raisman followed suit in November shortly before Gabby Douglas did the same. Then in January, Jordyn Wieber joined Maroney, Raisman and Douglas in doing so.
Now Ross has joined her four former teammates in accusing Nassar of sexual assault, meaning all five gymnasts on the first United States women's OIympic gymnastics team to win a gold medal since the 1996 team have done so.
Raisman and Douglas both competed on the gold medal-winning 2016 United States women's Olympic gymnastics team, also known as the "Final Five" as well. Two of their three teammates on that team, Simone Biles and Madison Kocian, have also accused Nassar of sexual assault.
As a result, seven of the eight gymnasts who have competed on one or both of the last two United States women's Olympic gymnastics teams have done so. Kocian, like Ross, revealed on Thursday that Nassar sexually assaulted her.
Ross revealing that Nassar sexually assaulted her is devastating in itself, and it is also devastating to know now that not a single one of the members of the "Fierce Five" were able to get to where they were without having to endure the pain brought upon them by Nassar's sexual assault.
But while this is devastating, it is encouraging that these five girls have all been brave enough to speak out about Nassar's sexual assault and that they are trying to make a difference to ensure that nothing along the lines of what happened to them happens to anybody else in the future.
At this point, all five of them have gone public with their accusations against Nassar, and as a result, they can now all focus on healing and moving forward instead of focusing on how to make their accusations public and dealing with inevitable the stress that comes along with that.
Nassar has now been accused of sexually assaulting more than 330 people, many of whom female gymnasts, under the guise of medical treatment for more than two decades before he was arrested in December of 2016.
Nassar has been issued three lengthy prison sentences for his actions. In December, he was sentenced to 60 years in federal prison on three child pornography charges. He is currently serving this prison sentence at United States Penitentiary, Tucson, a maximum-security federal prison in Tucson, Arizona that offers a sex offender program for sexual predators such as he.
In January, Nassar was sentenced to between 40 and 175 years in state prison on seven sexual assault charges, in and February, he was sentenced to between an additional 40 and 125 years in state prison on three more sexual assault charges.
In June, Nassar was charged with six counts of second-degree sexual assault of a child, but no additional prison time has been issued to him as a result of these charges.