Lawrence G. Nassar, the doctor convicted of sexually abusing young gymnasts, was stabbed multiple times in the chest, back and neck at a Florida federal prison where he is serving a 60-year sentence, according to two people with knowledge of the case. situation.
Mr. Nassar, 59, is in stable condition after another inmate attacked him at the Coleman Federal Correctional Complex, a sprawling prison complex in Central Florida, they said.
It is unclear when the altercation occurred or what prompted the attack. A spokeswoman for the Federal Bureau of Prisons, which runs the complex, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The episode adds to a long-running and troubled case of a prominent sports doctor accused of sexually assaulting and assaulting dozens of young women and children, including Michigan State University athletes, Olympians and members of the US Gymnastics national team. USA, under the pretext of providing treatment and examinations.
In a scathing 2021 report, the Justice Department’s inspector general found that the FBI initially botched the investigation, allowing Nassar to assault more young women.
Mr. Nassar was convicted on federal charges in 2017. A Michigan judge sentenced him to an additional 40 to 125 years a year later after pleading guilty to three additional counts of sexual assault. A federal judge ordered that sentence run concurrently and remanded him to federal custody.
The incident is also the latest in a series of suicides and violent attacks against some of the most notorious inmates at the chronically understaffed Federal Bureau of Prisons. Last month, Theodore J. Kaczynski, known as the Unabomber, who killed three people and wounded 23 in a wave of bombings between 1978 and 1995, committed suicide at a federal prison medical center in North Carolina.
In 2018, James Bulger, a Boston gangster known as Whitey, was brutally beaten to death in a federal prison after he was transferred to a West Virginia prison in 2018 after a cascade of mismanagement and violations of the protocol would leave it unattended and vulnerable to attack, the inspector general found. A similar atmosphere of dysfunction was pervasive at the Manhattan federal prison where financier Jeffrey Epstein hanged himself in 2019, the inspector general said in a report released last month.
Last year, 13 athletes who were sexually assaulted by Nassar each asked the FBI for $10 million, alleging that agents mishandled the investigation, allowing him to continue abusing more victims.
The athletes in the lawsuit were abused by Mr. Nassar while at the Twistars gymnastics club, outside of Lansing, Michigan. John Geddert, owner of Twistars and referred injured athletes to Mr. Nassar, fueling a cycle of abuse, committed suicide in 2021 after being accused of human trafficking.
Some of the athletes, who were middle or high school students at the time, were assaulted after the FBI first learned of the abuse allegations in 2015, attorneys for the women said.
In 2021, the department’s inspector general strongly criticized the FBI’s handling of the case, saying Mr. Nassar had abused 70 or more young athletes since July 2015, when USA Gymnastics first reported the allegations against him. to the Indianapolis field office of the FBI, until August 2016, when the Michigan State University Police Department received a separate complaint.
