The NCAA sent a letter of inquiry to Michigan State University, formally opening an investigation into how the university handled the case of Lawrence G. Nassar, the doctor who sexually assaulted scores of female athletes.
Nassar spent decades on the faculty at the university and treated its athletes, as well as members of the U.S. national gymnastics team.
“The NCAA has requested information from Michigan State about any potential rules violations,” Donald M. Remy, the association’s chief legal officer, said in a phone interview Tuesday evening.
NCAA bylaws require colleges to protect the health, safety and well-being of athletes. Among those who have said Nassar abused them are members of the Michigan State cross-country and softball teams. Kathie Klages, the former gymnastics coach who retired last year, has been accused of seeking to cover up allegations against Nassar, who served as team physician for the university gymnastics and women’s crew programs.
In a statement late Tuesday, the association said: “The NCAA has sent a letter of inquiry to Michigan State University regarding potential NCAA rules violations related to the assaults Larry Nassar perpetrated against girls and young women, including some student-athletes at Michigan State. We will have no further comment at this time.”
A Michigan State spokesman said Tuesday night that the university was reviewing the letter before issuing a response.
The NCAA, the governing body of intercollegiate athletics, was widely criticized several years ago for its handling of a case involving Penn State University in which Jerry Sandusky, a longtime assistant football coach, sexually abused young boys. (Sandusky is serving a decadeslong prison term.)
Less than a year after the Penn State scandal became public in the fall of 2011, an independent investigation commissioned by Penn State and led by Louis J. Freeh, a former FBI director, helped lead to NCAA sanctions, including a $60 million fine and the vacating of more than 100 wins from the lifetime record of former head coach Joe Paterno, who died earlier that year. Several of the penalties were later rescinded and the wins restored.
Critics contended that the NCAA had overstepped its bounds with those penalties. Emails made public because of a lawsuit two years later appeared to show NCAA officials questioning whether their institution had the authority to issue such penalties on a university, even one where several high-ranking officials later received jail time for their roles in covering up Sandusky’s abuse.
In one email, an NCAA official referred to the consent decree between the association and Penn State as a “bluff” and urged a settlement because the NCAA’s chances of proving a violation of its bylaws before a Committee on Infractions might prove difficult.
Last year, an NCAA Committee on Infractions demonstrated just how narrow those bylaws can be when it declined to penalize the University of North Carolina over a scandal in which scores of dubious classes were taken disproportionally by football and men’s basketball players. Through gritted teeth, the committee said it could not find an NCAA violation because the classes had been available to all students.
The Nassar case has drawn comparisons to the Sandusky case, raising questions about how university officials responded to warning signs about federal crimes being committed on their campus and about whether they tried to protect someone who was considered valuable to the athletics program. The Michigan State University police received a report about Nassar as early as May 2014, and on Tuesday a former rower at Michigan State said she had received no response to two separate reports of abuse by Nassar.
Michigan State President Lou Anna Simon, a former chair of what is now known as the NCAA Board of Governors, has faced calls for resignation, although the university’s board has largely supported her.
The Nassar case has been pushed further into the national spotlight over the past week as Judge Rosemarie Aquilina has allowed more than 140 women, and others connected to the case, to speak at a sentencing hearing for Nassar, who has pleaded guilty to multiple sex crimes and has already been sentenced to 60 years in prison on child pornography charges. On Monday, three leading members of the board of USA Gymnastics, which also employed Nassar for years, resigned amid increasing criticism of how they responded to reports of his abuse.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.