Last month a judge ordered former Michigan State University President Lou Anna K. Simon to stand trial on charges related to the Larry Nassar sexual misconduct case. Simon faces two felony and two misdemeanor charges and is accused of giving false statements to police and impeding the investigation into Nassar's sexual assaults. Simon is the third former MSU official to be ordered to trial. She had resigned in January of 2018 after testimony from Nassar's victims resulted in a public outcry for her to leave her role.
Authorities said that Simon knew as early as 2014 that Nassar had been accused of molesting a patient at an MSU campus clinic. Simon said that she only knew that a complaint had been filed against a sports doctor. And until MSU's Title IX investigation of the complain in 2016, she said she did not know of the substance of the complaint. Eaton County District Judge Julie Reincke found probable cause to send Simon to trial. The Associated Press reported that Reincke said evidence suggests that Simon had discussed the sexual abuse allegations of Amanda Thomashow with a senior adviser Paulette Granberry Russell.
"It is not credible to believe that Simon would have heard even the outline of Thomashow's story and forgotten it," Reincke wrote.
This ruling came on the same day that MSU released that trustee Nancy Schlichting resigned over the governing board's decision to drop an independent review of Nassar's crimes. This was despite the fact that the board voted unanimously in June for the investigation. According to an Associated Press report, in a letter to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Schlichting said her resignation came because four trustees did not share her commitment to a review that would include the release of documents protected by attorney-client privilege. Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel's office is prosecuting Simon. It has called for the university to waive attorney-client privilege and release nearly 6,000 documents.
"I deeply regret that my board service has been so short, but hope that the next appointed trustee will be able to make a greater impact than I have," Schlichting wrote.
Gov. Whitmer will name a replacement to serve out the remainder of the term through 2022 when the seat will be up for election.
A day before the announcement came from Trustees Chairwoman Dianne Byrum that the review wasn't going to happen, the federal government ordered MSU to pay a $4.5 million fine and make changes across campus as a result of its failure to adequately deal with the Nassar complaints.
Former MSU President Simon to Stand Trial in Nassar Case
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