What Is a Girl Worth?: My Story of Breaking the Silence and Exposing the Truth about Larry Nassar and USA Gymnastics
added by Jonathan Simcoe · updated 9mo ago
added by Jonathan Simcoe · updated 9mo ago
“The way to healing,” he told me then, “is to take what you’ve been through and make it mean something. And you’ve done that.” And I remembered one more time: The more you love, the harder you fight.
Jonathan Simcoe added 9mo ago
As I began, the words of the abolitionist William Wilberforce ran through my mind: “You may choose to look the other way but you can never again say you did not know.”[1] In 1789, filled with passion over the evil of slavery and an unflinching commitment to see it end, he had risen in the British Parliament and described in unwavering graphic detai
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“You need to know,” he started, “this does not diminish your value. This doesn’t make me think less of you.” He looked over at me and I glanced back briefly. “All this does is give me direction for how to best serve and care for you. Honestly . . .” He laughed just a bit. “I’ve been wondering this whole time what I could possibly bring to the relat
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“I have this quote above my desk,” she added. “‘Our job is to move a case towards justice. . . . We aren’t the court of justice, but we can be part of reaching for justice.’[3] . . . How do you use this coverage to talk about how predators operate? If we don’t do that, we failed. Anybody can take notes in court or tweet or point a camera.”
Jonathan Simcoe added 9mo ago
In other words, my motivation needed to be love—not anger, not revenge—which meant doing only what was necessary to restrain without a desire to harm the other person.
Jonathan Simcoe added 9mo ago
But I noticed that fellow Christians pretty much talked only about our need to understand the wrong things we’d done. No one talked about God’s supposed hatred for the wrongs done against us. Whenever anyone at church talked about injustice in the world, it was almost always to emphasize how wrong it was to be angry, bitter, or unforgiving, as if n
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I wanted to be done with the fear and shame. I wanted to be done with the grief. I wanted to feel whole again.
Jonathan Simcoe added 9mo ago
“I’ve been coming for you for a long time,” she told Larry, her voice tinged with anger and power. “I’ve told counselors your name in hopes that they would report you. I’ve reported you to Child Protective Services twice. I gave a testament to get your medical license revoked. “Perhaps you have figured it out by now,” she said, without flinching. “
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I had to let myself grieve again because grief was the outlet that allowed unhealthy anger to be washed away. And I had to remind myself that longing for what is straight is good. The straight line is there, I told myself. And you can see the evil, because you know the good. Let the grief at what is so crooked turn you to what is straight. I rememb
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