Disgraced sports doctor Larry Nassar, convicted of sexually abusing Olympic and collegiate gymnasts, was stabbed multiple times during an altercation with another inmate at a Florida federal prison.
Two people familiar with the matter told the Associated Press the attack took place at Coleman prison in the United States on Sunday. People said his condition was stable as of Monday.
One of the people said Nassar was stabbed in the back and chest. The prison was understaffed and the two officers assigned to the unit where Nassar was being held were working overtime, one of the people said.
The individuals were not authorized to publicly discuss details of the attack or the ongoing investigation and spoke to the ` on condition of anonymity.
Nassar is serving decades of convictions in state and federal courts. He admitted to sexually abusing athletes while working at Michigan State University and USA Gymnastics in Indianapolis, where Olympians train. Separately, Nassar pleaded guilty to possession of child pornography.
The Federal Penitentiary Service has faced significant staffing shortages in recent years, an issue that came under the spotlight when disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein committed suicide in a federal prison in New York in 2019.
A 2021 Associated Press investigation found that nearly a third of federal correctional officer positions nationwide were vacant, forcing prisons to use cooks, teachers, nurses and other staff to guard inmates. Staff shortages have hampered response to emergencies at other prisons, including suicides.
Other ` investigations have uncovered, among other things, sexual abuse and criminal behavior at the Bureau of Prisons — the Justice Department’s largest agency with more than 30,000 employees, 158,000 inmates and an annual budget of around $8 billion.
The bureau’s new head, Colette Peters, was hired last year to help reform the troubled agency. She has vowed to reform outdated hiring practices and bring new transparency. However, problems remain, as illustrated by the recent suicide of Ted Kaczynski, known as “Unabomber,” in a federal prison in North Carolina.
On Sunday, one of Nassar’s unit officers worked the third straight shift — a 16-hour day, said one of those familiar with the matter. And the other officer was on his second straight shift, the person said.
Several athletes testified in 2018 that over the course of more than two decades of Nassar’s sexual abuse, they had told adults, including coaches and athletic trainers, what was happening but it was not reported.
More than 100 women, including Olympic gold medalist Simone Biles, are collectively demanding more than $1 billion from the federal government for the FBI’s failure to stop Nassar after agents learned of allegations against him in 2015. He was arrested by Michigan State University police in 2015 and 2016, more than a year later.
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