Larry Nassar In Letter To Judge: Listening To Victims' Statements In Court Is Too Mentally Taxing 

Larry Nassar, who admitted to decades of sexual abuse of girls and young women, often under the guise of medical treatment, wrote a letter to the judge in charge of his sentencing hearing in which he accused her of using the hearing to get media attention for herself and expressed concern about his mental capacity to listen to his victims read their statements in court.

“She wants me to sit in the witness box next to her for all four days so the media cameras will be directed toward her,” Nassar wrote in the letter. Judge Rosemarie Aquilina read excerpts of the six-page letter in court today.

“I’m very concerned about my ability to be able to face witnesses this next four days mentally,” he wrote.

Aquilina dismissed the letter whole cloth, calling it “mumbo jumbo.” She said:

“You may find it harsh that you are here listening, but nothing is as harsh as what your victims endured for thousands of hours at your hands. Spending four or five days listening to them is significantly minor considering the hours of pleasure you’ve had at their expense and ruining their lives.”

Nassar tried to defend the letter, which he wrote before the first day of the four-day hearing, as a cry for community mental health. Per CNN:

“When I wrote that, it was before I came here, OK. It was a stress—as it says at the end, it was like a cathartic, you know what I mean, it was just a—it was meant for a cry for community mental health.”

Nassar has already been sentenced to 60 years in prison following a federal child pornography case. Aquilina is expected to sentence him to life in prison.