Athlete A

 3/4

Rated PG-13 for Mature Thematic Content including Detailed Descriptions of Sexual Abuse of Minors

Early into "Athlete A," the Netflix documentary about the scandal where USA Gymnastics, US Olympics, Michigan State University and the FBI knew that Larry Nassar was sexually abusing athletes and covered it up, a reporter poses an obvious question: why do cases of sexual abuse get covered up?  After all, people are required to notify the authorities as soon as they are made aware of allegations of sexual misconduct.  Yet this keeps happening time and time again.  Penn State covered up Jerry Sandusky's abuses.  Ohio State did the same thing too.  And there are hundreds of cases of religious officials doing the same for religious officials all around the world.  Is it because sexual assault is just too terrible to imagine?  That's no excuse, though.  But what's puzzling is that for some reason knowledge of this seems to drive people in positions of power to cover it up rather than bite the bullet and do the right thing.

What Larry Nassar did to these women is fairly common knowledge.  He used his position as a trainer to sexually abuse hundreds of girls and women, occasionally even in front of their own parents (carefully hiding his misdeeds from view).  Larry Nassar was a monster who should never have gotten away with his  crimes for, I'm sorry to say, two decades.  USA Gymnastics knew about this and covered it up.  This too we all know.  What's interesting about "Athlete A" is not just that they put human faces to the survivors, but they aim even bigger than that.  They rip open the curtains on a culture that fell victim to the old sins of greed and vanity.  What started out as an organization that prided itself on excellence slowly turned rotten enough to the point where it was too happy to overlook all manner of abuses as long as it got results.  And to protect its image, it resorted to deception and even extortion.

Like many complex stories, no one set out to nail a big fish.  It was rather innocuous.  Marisa Kwiatkowski, a reporter for the Indianapolis Star, was looking into cover-ups of sexual misconduct at local schools with the aim of discovering why, time and time again, people failed to notify the authorities immediately even when they were required to do so by law.  A source of hers advised her to look into how USA Gymnastics deals with such allegations.  Soon after, they draw the line between three former gymnasts with almost identical, disturbing stories.  And with a story like this, once the genie is out of the bottle, all hell will break loose: a sex scandal that bring down a serial predator and reach the highest echelons of power.

In telling this story, directors Bonni Cohen and Jon Shenk don't get artsy or showy.  Like all good reporters, their focus is on the story they have to tell.  They proceed without fear, naming names and letting the survivors tell their stories.  Sexual abuse is a touchy subject, and especially for stories about real life victims.  Cohen and Shenk understand the meaning of tact.  They allow Nassar's victims to tell their stories but not for a moment is there ever a hint of exploitation.  They're more interested in exposing the cover-up and condemning the guilty than shocking their audience.

If only it was put together better.  It is true that the Nassar scandal was very complicated and the directors are ambitious in their scope.  In addition to the sex scandal, Cohen and Shenk explore the culture of USA Gymnastics and how it began to rot.  Singled out for particular scorn are Bela and Marta Karolyi, two Romanian coaches who came to fame when they shepherded 14 year old Nadia Comaneci to the gold at the 1976 Olympics.  When they defected from the Ceausescu regime, USA Olympics happy to hire them and overlook their reputation for violence and cruelty because they knew how to bring in the gold medals. And with it, came a bunch of money in advertising and sponsors.  Their brutality is enough where pictures of their training facility, which looks very much like a compound, is enough to generate dread and fear.

"Athlete A" makes two things clear.  For one thing, the legal system has to be far more aggressive in pursuing those who ignore or cover-up misconduct.  What these women went through was horrific.  But the fact that they were lied to or forced into silence by those who could do something about it is just as awful.  The scandal let to court hearings, a number of resignations and a gigantic financial settlement, but as we all know, that's not good enough.  Steve Penny, the CEO of USA Gymnastics, was only arrested for evidence tampering.  Not his cover-ups or the fact that he tried to bribe an FBI agent with a job in exchange for turning the other way.  Nor was anyone else.  The Karolyis were not charged for the horrors they perpetrated in the athletes they subjected to all sorts of abuses while forbidding the girls from even contacting their families regularly (or, for that matter, covering up Nassar's abuses).

The other is that the courage of these women to come forward and tell their stories is beyond words.  They gave so much to their sport and were spurned for their sacrifices by those who profited from them.  They were abused then lied to about it and betrayed by those they trusted.  And yet they survive.  They told their story and made sure that no one could take their courage away from them.  These extraordinary women are the true heroes.