THE SURVIVOR
Sara Teristi saw the making of a monster. She watched a man transform from doctor to predator, starting decades ago when he gained access to a gym full of little girls. She was one of those girls. She may have been his very first target.
She first met Larry Nassar—the most prolific known sex criminal in American sports history—at a gym in Michigan in late 1988. She was a young gymnast in a vulnerable state, she says, having been emotionally trampled by her hard-driving coach, John Geddert, a man who made her feel worthless. Nassar, who was volunteering as team doctor, zoomed in on her right away.
Now in her 40s, Sara tells me her story in a quiet courtyard of an art museum near her home in Raleigh, N.C. She is sharing her experience publicly for the first time, much of it recently pieced together after repressing the memories for decades, and she does not want to tell this tale in her house, around her two young sons. She remembers how Geddert created a culture of fear at the gym—shoving her, berating her, mocking her body—and how she lost her sense of self. She recalls that he watched while Nassar sexually abused her.
Today, she wears a metal knee brace from old gymnastics injuries. Physical pain is a part of her everyday life. Then there are the psychological scars. “People don’t understand how many broken girls it takes to produce an elite athlete,” she says, delivering the haunting words with the perfect posture of a gymnast. “A coach can easily go through 300 girls, or more.”
Sara has detailed the events in this story, piece by piece, to two police departments in Michigan, starting after Nassar’s sentencing in 2018, and has provided TIME with those reports. She is also participating in a mass tort suit against Nassar, Geddert and other individuals and institutions. Attorneys for Geddert did not respond to requests for comment on the allegations in this story. An attorney for Nassar said the former doctor is not doing interviews.
Nassar and Geddert worked together for nearly three decades at gyms in Michigan, rising to the top of the sport as Olympic doctor and coach. Geddert led the U.S. women’s team to win gold at the 2012 Olympics. All the while, Nassar abused hundreds of young women and girls while pretending to treat them. He is now behind bars, where he will spend the rest of his life. Dozens of officials have been ousted or charged with crimes in the
