“Athlete A” is an indictment of the devastating culture of mental and physical abuse that ran rampant for years in USA Gymnastics. The organization ignored and covered up widespread sexual abuse of its world-class athletes, who were barely in their teens, by its coaches and doctors.
Filmmakers Jon Shenk and Bonni Cohen (“An Inconvenient Sequel”) put the victims of this sexual abuse in front of their cameras, letting them tell their story, with supporting footage spread throughout to back up their testimony. The result is a 103-minute documentary that tackles numerous different strands of the tragedy, with a lending hand from the Indianapolis Star journalists who pursued and broke the story, but ultimately ends up concentrating on those who suffered sexual abuse at the hands of Osteopathic physician, Larry Nassar.
The doc makes the case for the toxic culture in USA Gymnastics seeming to have started when famous Romanian coach, Béla Károlyi and his wife Marta, defected from the communist country to the United States in 1981. They became the most powerful women’s gymnastics coaches in the U.S, changing the culture of the program. This lead to countless gold medals won over the years, but not without the gymnasts suffering emotional and physical abuse.
After tackling the Karolyi’s story, the film invariably shifts to Nassar’s abuse and testimony from his victims, which include Maggie Nichols, Jessica Howard, Rachel Denhollander, Jamie Dantzcher, and others. When Nichols reported Nassar’s abuse to her mother and then to USA Gymnastics in 2015, the organization’s CEO, Steve Penny, promised to investigate, but instead hired a private firm to do an outside investigation which covered it all up.
The film is told in calm, and straightforward fashion, first tackling the climate of fear and intimidation the Károlyis created, and then Nassar, described by one former gymnast as “the only nice adult I could remember being part of the USA Gymnastics staff.” He took advantage of the toxic atmosphere by comforting the girls, slipping them extra food and candy and then, in the semblance of medical exams, slipping his ungloved finger into their vaginas.
“Athlete A” is being released as a slew of other docs about abuse are seeing the light of day (“On the Record” and “Leaving Neverland”), but unlike some of those releases, the evidence in Nassar’s case is overwhelming, so much so that it can sometimes be very difficult for the viewer to watch how his behavior was so openly known, and how USA Gymnastics dismissed the complaints as hearsay.
Right after The Indianapolis Star began reporting on the abuse in 2016, more women surfaced to tell their stories, and when all was said and done, the number of victims reached the 500s. [B+]