It’s the Only Thing

This story about the systematic abuse of athletes in U.S. Gymnastics is horrifying and infuriating:

The allegations against Nassar go beyond what the doctor is alleged to have done under the guise of treatment—penetrating his young patients vaginally or rectally with his fingers without gloves, consent, or, in many cases, other parties present. They also have to do with the secretive, insular, and even abusive culture of women’s gymnastics in the United States against which Dantzscher spoke out after Sydney. The system may not have been designed to allow a sexual predator both ready access to victims and the means to go undetected, but it’s clear by now, and should have been long ago, that if it wasn’t, it may as well have been.

Seeing people as means to an end rarely ends well.