A former USA Gymnastics coach and associate of disgraced team doctor and convicted sex offender Larry Nassar has been hit with 24 felony charges on Thursday, including 20 counts of human trafficking spanning from about 2008 to 2018, and two counts of sexual assault, authorities in Michigan announced Thursday. John Geddert owned the Twistars gymnastics club in the state, where Nassar worked and allegedly sexually abused hundreds of women. The trafficking charges
While Geddert’s attorneys had previously alleged he “was not a witness to the alleged abuse and did not learn of it until after Nassar was arrested,” several women testified otherwise during Nassar’s 2018 trial. Several testified that Geddert physically and mentally abused them under his tutelage; another testified that Geddert walked in while she was being assaulted by Nassar, but did nothing to stop it. "There is no excuse for you not knowing what was happening in your gym," gymnast Bailey Lorencen said of Geddert, at Nassar’s 2018 trial, according to the Lansing State Journal. “Except for inexcusable neglect and lack of leadership... I don’t understand why anyone could still want to train (at Twistars), especially knowing that in that back room dungeon, hundreds of your athletes were being molested.” Geddert’s charges also include racketeering and lying to the police in 2016. The charging document states that Geddert knowingly lied when he told investigators that he had no knowledge of Nassar's actions.
Read the complaint here.
Read it at Lansing State Journal
