Aly Raisman Speaks Out Following Larry Nassar’s Sentencing: ‘He Deserves To Suffer’

Olympic gymnast Aly Raisman sat down with Hota Kotb on Thursday morning following the sentencing of ex-Team USA doctor Larry Nassar. On Wednesday, Judge Rosemarie Anguilina ordered Nassar 40 to 175 years behind bars, delivering scathing remarks from behind the bench and telling him that she had just “signed [his] death warrant.”

Yet, Raisman still doesn’t feel as if justice was serviced. “It’s not something where you just instantly feel better,” she told Kotb. “We need to hold these organizations accountable. USA Gymnastics, United States Olympic Committee, MSU — they need an independent investigation. This is bigger than Larry Nassar, we have to get to the bottom of how this disaster happened, if you don’t figure out how it did, we can’t be confident it won’t happen again.”

She later compared the experience of speaking out in court as a victim to competing in the Olympics, but after felt sick and exhausted for hours. Even a week later, she still doesn’t feel completely better.

On Nassar’s apology letter, Raisman doesn’t feel as though the ex-doctor even remotely gets the pain he has caused to so many victims. “The fact that he wrote a letter to the judge a few days prior saying it was unfair and he shouldn’t have to listen to us speak, and that’s why in my statement I did call him out,” she told Kotb. “I said, ‘How dare you say this is hard for you, imagine how all of us feel.’ I mean, he just deserves to suffer, it’s disgusting what happened.

×