“My office has been notified that the body of John Geddert
was found late this afternoon after taking his own life,” Michigan Attorney
General Dana Nessel said in a statement.
“This is a tragic end to a tragic story for everyone
involved.”
Hours earlier Nessel had announced a 24-count criminal
complaint against Geddert, who owned an elite training facility near Lansing,
Michigan, where convicted sex offender Larry Nassar served as the gym doctor.
In addition to two sexual assault charges involving an unnamed
athlete between the ages of 13 and 16, 20 counts of human trafficking and
forced labor were the result of Geddert’s alleged coercive and abusive coaching
practices “as he reportedly subjected his athletes to forced labor or services
under extreme conditions that contributed to them suffering injuries and harm.”
“Geddert then neglected those injuries that were reported to
him by the victims and used coercion, intimidation, threats and physical force
to get them to perform to the standard he expected,” prosecutors said.
Nessel had said at a press conference streamed on social
media Thursday morning that Geddert, 63, was expected to surrender to
authorities at 2:15 pm on Thursday to be arraigned on the charges.
However, Michigan State Police said that his body was found
at a highway rest area outside Lansing at 3:24 pm.
“Investigation is ongoing; no further details will be
released at this time,” the police statement said.
Geddert coached the US women’s gymnastics team to gold at
the 2012 London Olympics.
He came under scrutiny because of his close personal and
professional relationship with Nassar, the former US national team doctor
sentenced to life in prison over the sexual abuse of multiple young female
gymnasts over almost three decades under the guise of medical treatment.
A personal coach to US gymnast Jordyn Wieber and owner of
the Twistars training facility, Geddert was accused by many Nassar victims of
requiring them to be treated by the disgraced doctor, who was convicted of
multiple sexual assault charges and finally incarcerated in federal prison in
2018.
USA Gymnastics suspended Geddert in 2018, the year after he
insisted he had “zero knowledge” of Nassar’s crimes, and he immediately
retired.
Rachael Denhollander, a former gymnast who in 2016 was the
first woman to publicly accuse Nassar of sexual assault, tweeted Thursday that
Geddert’s abusive behavior was widely known as early as 2000.
“Geddert’s abuse, like so much, was never a secret. EVER,”
she tweeted.
“In my memoir I wrote about knowing of it even as a club
level gymnast in 2000. Because we have to grapple with the reality that it was
known, and no one stopped him. It was known, and he was promoted and given more
power.”
Verbal, physical, sexual abuse
In three weeks of sentencing hearings for Nassar, in which
some 200 women, girls and victims’ families confronted him, Twistars gymnasts
said they had endured physical and verbal abuse by Geddert.
Prosecutors stressed on Thursday that the only charge against
Geddert specifically linked to Nassar was that of lying to authorities when
asked whether he knew the doctor was sexually abusing athletes.
Otherwise, they said, “the crimes alleged against Mr Geddert
are his own.”
“These allegations focus on multiple acts of verbal,
physical and sexual abuse perpetrated by the defendant against multiple
victims,” Nessel said of charges stemming from incidents between 2008 and 2018.
“I am grateful for these survivors coming forward to
cooperate with our investigation and for bravely sharing their stories.”
Geddert was also charged with racketeering, with prosecutors
alleging he trafficked 15 athletes for financial gain and with lying to
authorities investigating Nassar.
Nessel acknowledged that the forced labor-human trafficking
charges “have not typically been used and applied to the set of circumstances
that I think exist in this case.”
But, she said, months of reviewing case law convinced
prosecutors they were applicable.
“The victims suffer from disordered eating, including
bulimia and anorexia, suicide attempts, and self-harm,” Nessel said, adding
that Geddert subjected his gymnasts to “excessive physical conditioning,
repeatedly being forced to perform even while injured, extreme emotional abuse
and physical abuse, including sexual assault.”
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