Ex-Team USA gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar stabbed multiple times in prison
Child molester Larry Nassar was stabbed multiple times in the federal prison where he was sent to rot for sexually assaulting hundreds of gymnasts, including gold medal-winning Olympians.
Nassar, 59, was stabbed twice in the neck, twice in the back and six times in the chest in the Sunday afternoon attack in the Federal Correctional Complex Coleman in Central Florida, a union official told The Post.
He was listed in stable condition despite suffering a collapsed lung, said Local 506 president Joe Rojas, a New York native who’s worked at the prison for nearly 30 years.
“He is lucky to be alive,” Rojas said of the notorious pedophile.
“If it wasn’t for the staff who were there, he wouldn’t be with us today.”
Still, the union leader stressed that while Nassar was listed as being in stable condition, that could change given that he appears to have been “hit in vital organs” with what was likely an unsanitized makeshift metal weapon.
“He’s not out of the woods yet — those are serious injuries,” Rojas said.
So far, it is unclear “how it happened or why it happened,” the union president said — while noting the notorious pedophile usually only mingles with other sex offenders.
“He’s in a special unit where he doesn’t socialize with the normal population,” Rojas said. “He’s already been here since 2018 and we’ve never had an incident with him” before, he said.
However, it came just two weeks after staff protested over alarming levels of understaffing, which Rojas said was “prophetic” of such an attack. “We called this — we said this was going to happen,” he said.
The Federal Bureau of Prisons confirmed to The Post that an inmate was assaulted at the prison just after 2:30 p.m. Sunday, but declined to identify him over privacy and security concerns.
“Responding staff immediately initiated life-saving measures,” bureau spokesperson Donald Murphy said.
“The inmate was transported by (emergency personnel) to a local hospital for further treatment and evaluation.”
The FBI was notified and an internal investigation is ongoing, said Murphy, who refused to discuss who was responsible for the attack inside the high-security prison that houses more than 1,200 male inmates.
“No staff or other inmates were injured and at no time was the public in danger,” the spokesman said.
The attack was first reported by The Associated Press, which cited two sources.
It prompted Nassar’s first known victim to release a statement, which called on prison officials to better protect Nassar so he can “face the severe prison sentence he received” and avoid “an easy out.”
“This assault on Nassar brings no peace to me personally or to the survivors I’ve spoken with today,” said Sarah Klein, who is now a civil and trial attorney that represents sexual abuse victims.
“The incident forces us to vividly relive our abuse and trauma at the hands of Nassar and the institutions, including law enforcement, that protected him and allowed him to prey on children.
“I urge the Department of Justice and the Bureau of Prisons to see that Nassar is not allowed to escape his sentence and consequences of his horrible crimes.”
More than 300 girls and women, including Olympians like Aly Raisman and Simone Biles, accused the former Michigan State University sports doctor of sexually abusing them under the guise of medical treatment in a pattern of horrendous abuse that stretched back decades.
He eventually admitted sexually assaulting athletes at the university and USA Gymnastics, which trains Olympians.
The abuse led to three separate prison sentences in state and federal trials.
Michigan Judge Rosemarie Aquilina even told Nassar it was her “honor and privilege to sentence” him to 40 to 175 years in prison in January 2018.
“I just signed your death warrant,” she told him. “You do not deserve to walk outside a prison ever again.”
More than 65 women then gave impact statements during a separate trial in which Nassar got a 40- to 125-year sentence for abusing young girls at the Twistars Gymnastics Club in Dimondale, Michigan.
During that trial, a raging father whose three daughters said they were all molested by Nassar tried to attack him in court after asking for “five minutes in a locked room with this demon.”
Nassar was also sentenced to 60 years in federal prison on child pornography charges.
During sentencing in that case, District Judge Janet Neff said that the “predator” should “never again have access to children.”
He is listed as being eligible for release from federal prison on Jan. 30, 2068 — when he would be 104.
If still alive, he would then die in state prison on the other charges.
Michigan State Police arrested him in 2016, but the university was accused of missing many opportunities to detain the predator and agreed to a $500 million settlement with his victims.
USA Gymnastics and the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee also agreed to a $380 million settlement for failing to protect their young athletes from Nassar’s abuse.
With Post wires