Olympics officials failed to act after a 2015 warning about Larry Nassar, leaving USA Gymnastics to handle the sexual abuse scandal, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday in an exclusive report.
The revelations come in the wake the United States Olympic Committee, led by chief executive Scott Blackmun, demanding that the entire 21-member USA Gymnastics board resign in the wake of the Nassar scandal, the newspaper said.
The national gymnastics board did that this week, preventing a threat from the USOC to decertify it as the Olympic governing body of the sport if the resignations did not happen, USA Today reported.
Last week, Nassar, the former national team doctor for USA Gymnastics and a sports physician at Michigan State University, was sentenced to up to 175 years in prison for seven sexual assault charges, USA Today reported.
More than 265 girls and young women have said Nassar abused them, including Olympic champions Simone Biles, Aly Raisman, McKayla Maroney, Gabby Douglas and Jordyn Wieber, USA Today said.
According to The Wall Street Journal report, USA Gymnastics then-president Steve Penny called Blackmun for guidance about allegations against Nassar on July 25, 2015, according to a source with knowledge about the call.
Penny told Blackmun that he had planned to contact law enforcement in connection with a July 24 conversation where an Olympic gymnast reported to an internal investigator what appeared could be considered sexual assault by a team doctor, the Journal wrote.
Blackmun reportedly told Penny to "do what he had to do," according to the source, but provided no other guidance to USA Gymnastics over the following months, the newspaper said.
Penny then emailed USOC chief security officer Larry Buendorf two months later, telling him about allegations made by three top gymnasts against Nassar, which included a graphic description of Nassar's purported treatment, people who reviewed the email told the Journal.
The USOC, though, has previously said in public that nobody at the organization knew of the allegations against Nassar until media reports surfaced in September 2016, the Journal wrote. The doctor was arrested two months later and sentenced last week, the newspaper noted.
Michigan State's president Lou Anna Simons and athletic director Mark Hollis resigned after Nassar's sentencing as well, NBC News noted.
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