The night before Christy Lemke planned to report Larry Nassar for sexually abusing her daughter, she first called Michigan State University gymnastics coach Kathie Klages.
What she heard in that January 2017 phone call astonished her. Four months after MSU fired Nassar, Klages passionately defended the doctor, suggesting that he was performing a legitimate medical procedure and had been framed with the child pornography found on a hard drive placed at his curb, Lemke said.
Yet just three weeks later, MSU’s 27-year gymnastics coach broke from her decades of loyalty to Nassar and told police that the physician had deceived her, according to records obtained by The Detroit News.