‘The Hidden History of the Pelvic Exam’: Larry Nassar and the National Nightmare

The 2000 USA women’s gymnastics team accepts their bronze medals on Aug. 11, 2010, in Hartford, Conn. Team members included Amy Chow, Jamie Dantzscher, Dominique Dawes, Kristin Maloney, Elise Ray and Tasha Schwikert. (Gary Hamilton / Icon SMI / Icon Sport Media via Getty Images)

This excerpt is from the first chapter of my new book, Exposed: The Hidden History of the Pelvic Exam. Here, I emphasize the importance of stigma when it comes to the pelvic exam. It’s an awkward procedure in part because of the question of impropriety. When is it OK to touch a person’s genitals? Stories in the media remind us that it is a procedure easily abused or misconstrued, with devastating consequences.

Larry Nassar, the former doctor for the U.S. women’s gymnastics team, was sentenced to up to 175 years in prison in 2018 after over 250 women accused him of sexual assault. Nassar is not representative of the majority of medical professionals who perform pelvic exams—but his story serves as a warning of how easy it is for pelvic violence to happen under the façade of medical treatment. Nassar got away with sex crimes precisely because of the stigma surrounding reproductive healthcare. Without a common language to articulate what should be going on down there, it makes it harder to identify what shouldn’t.

Editor’s note: This excerpt has been lightly edited for style. It contains descriptions of sexual violence.


 “He said he was doing a medical treatment.”

In September of 2000, Tasha, a 15-year-old gymnast, called her mother from Sydney, Australia, with some exciting news. Three weeks earlier, she was not Olympic-bound; she had not been placed in the Olympic trials. But, shortly after the trials, she received a call from Béla Károlyi who asked her to be an alternate. She flew down to his ranch to train, then directly to Sydney. And now, after a member of the team withdrew with injuries, she wouldn’t just be on the sidelines; she was officially competing.

Her mother, Joy Schwikert, answered the call from work—at the craps table at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, where she worked as the first-ever female craps dealer, along with Tasha’s father, Shannon Warren. Joy high-fived the other dealers in the pit, and the shouting “echoed off the slot machines.” The U.S. Olympic Committee had funds to fly one parent over, but not both, so the workers at Caesar’s took up a collection to fly her father and younger sister Jordan (also a gymnast) as well. Though they didn’t have any more money than the Schwickerts, “everyone wanted me to see my daughter at the Olympics,” her father said. 

Tasha was over the moon—she was competing, and her whole family would be there: sister, mother, father, and even her mother’s identical twin Jill, who, along with Joy, had been a professional tennis player in the 1970s. They would be there to witness her win the team bronze medal.

Tasha never expected to be an Olympian, according to the Los Angeles Times. “She is not a typical gymnast, groomed as a tiny tot to be the next Mary Lou.” But she and her sister loved the sport.  “We didn’t do this for the Olympics,” her father explained. “We did this because our girls love it.  What a journey this is.”[

What a journey, indeed. The exciting phone call from Béla inviting her to join as an alternate would change her life in more than one way. His invitation to train at the Karolyi Ranch en route to Sydney was not a choice; it was a requirement of anyone competing on the U.S. team, thanks to some changes within USA Gymnastics. But she was excited to go; ever since she was 13 and on the junior national team, she had been “awestruck” by Béla.  Now he would be training her!

Tasha Schwikert unwittingly entered the ranch at one of its most intense times. 

“We were all so broken down and injured,” remembered Jeannette Antolin, who was a member of the U.S. national team from 1995 to 2000. “No one was taking care of their bodies. We were all malnutritioned. Most of us had eating disorders at the time. Most of us were being abused by Larry and not knowing it.”

Schwikert joined the ranks of the abused after an injury she believes was caused by Béla.  She and her teammates were busy performing elevated splits, propping their front legs “up on a stack of mats so they can extend beyond 180 degrees.” Béla would forcibly push down on the shoulders of a gymnast who didn’t appear as flexible, forcing her legs closer to the ground. When he pushed Schwikert, she felt unbearable pain, and the next day she found she could barely walk, and was sent to Larry Nassar for treatment (she would eventually be diagnosed with a partially torn tendon in her groin).

It was a treatment like none other she had experienced. “He massaged and penetrated me vaginally with his bare hands, claiming it was a medical treatment that would loosen my muscles,” she explained.  She didn’t question it and she didn’t resist.  “I trusted him because he was a respected doctor.”  She didn’t understand that what he was doing was wrong; she didn’t know about sexual abuse, and had “no experience with boys or sex.”

Years later, as she put the pieces together, she saw things differently. “Now my whole Olympic experience is clouded by the fact I saw Larry Nassar four times a day.”

A few years later, at the age of 14, she suffered an Achilles injury. Nassar invited her to stay in his house in Lansing, Mich., for a week in order to “treat” her. Tasha’s parents were thrilled, as money was in short supply. He worked on her three times a day, either in a training room at Michigan State University (where he had an office), or on a massage table in his basement.  “He would start by massaging my Achilles tendon and would work his way up my leg, eventually penetrating me,” she recalled. Apparently Nassar had told her that there was a “pressure point in her vagina that would increase blood flow to the tissue in her heel.” At the time, she didn’t question it. “It was like staying with family,” she wrote, “like visiting a trusted uncle.”

But it wasn’t until the scandal unfolded in August of 2016 that she realized what Nassar had done to her.  “I wrestled emotionally with the fact that I had been so manipulated. Me, the strong, impermeable African American athlete,” she reflected.  “I beat myself up about it.  I kept thinking, I should have known; I should have known.” 

Therapy helped her come to terms with her guilt and self-blame. “I couldn’t see at first that the blame was on him, not me, for using his position as the Olympic doctor to take advantage of children.” 

And, like the four Olympians who spoke before the Senate Judiciary Committee in September of 2021, she became angry at those who should have prevented the abuse. “The adults I trusted as a kid to keep me safe—not just Larry, but also the officials at USA Gymnastics—had profoundly let me down. They had failed to protect me.”

They had also, it turns out, failed to protect her younger sister. Like Tasha, Jordan went to the Karolyi Ranch in her early teens, where she suffered a major back injury after “relentless pounding and repetitive stress.”  Like so many Nassar survivors, she believed Nassar knew the best medical techniques; he was, after all, a “world-renowned doctor.” Jordan assumed that the invasive procedure he performed on her was specific to her injuries.  “I never imagined that he did it to everyone,” she said. And she had no idea that he had done the same to her older sister.  “We never talked about it.” 

Like Tasha, she knew nothing about sexual abuse. “I had always thought of it as something more violent, like a rapist holding you down, not something your doctor would do while pretending to help you.”

Like so many Nassar survivors, it wasn’t until the story broke in the news that Jordan recognized that the “treatment” she’d received was so similar to what others described.  “That’s when it all came to light.  His hand had been in my vagina, and not for medical reasons. I felt disgusted.” At first she wanted to block it out, but as the scandal grew, she finally went to Tasha, to reveal her secret. “We were both surprised to hear that it had happened to the other.  It was a hard conversation to have.”

On Oct. 29, 2018, they filed civil suits against both the United States Olympic Committee and USA Gymnastics.

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About

Wendy Kline, Ph.D., Dema G. Seelye chair in the history of medicine at Purdue University, is internationally recognized for her scholarship in the history of medicine, history of women's health and the history of childbirth. She is the creator and director of Purdue's Medical Humanities certificate program. She is the author of four major books focusing on sexuality and reproduction, including Exposed: The Hidden History of the Pelvic Exam.