Division News & Statements
Reporter who broke Nassar sex abuse story to speak at GVSU
March 20, 2018
(This story originally appeared on GVNext)
Larry Nassar will spend the rest of his life in prison, serving sentences for the sexual abuse of more than 160 young women and possession of child pornography, but the long road to justice started with serious investigative reporting by Marisa Kwiatkowski and her colleagues from the Indianapolis Star.
Kwiatkowski, a 2005 graduate of Grand Valley State University, will speak about her investigative work and the impact of investigative journalism at an event at GVSU on March 26.
Kwiatkowski said she hopes to demonstrate the power of journalism and its role in explaining and uncovering complex systems during her presentation.
"The kind of journalism we do is not taking things at face value," Kwiatkowski said. "There's been a lot of great work done on gymnastics and the issue of sexual abuse in various sports and youth organizations, but what made our investigation different was we were able to show for the first time that there was a policy that USA Gymnastics executives had followed, and that policy had real implications for the safety of children in the sport."
She said the power of her team's investigative reporting to make change is based on being able to understand how systems work, but also learn how they break down. That work, Kwiatkowski said, ended up making a national impact in the Nassar story.
Local Reporting, National Impact: Marisa Kwiatkowski on Breaking the USA Gymnastics Story
Monday, March 26, 6 p.m.
Charles W. Loosemore Auditorium, Richard M. DeVos Center, 401 Fulton Street West, Grand Rapids, MI 49504
This event is free and open to the public
Hosted by the GVSU School of Communications Robert Mayberry COMM-UNITY series
RSVP here: https://www.facebook.com/events/167028970761514/?active_tab=about
Kwiatkowski said the Nassar story took two years to come full circle, including a year of working exclusively on the investigation with her colleagues Tim Evans and Mark Alesia.
The biggest challenge, she said, was getting straight answers from USA Gymnastics. "Early on they wouldn't meet with us, they would only answer questions in writing most of the time, and would only give partial answers. It was hard to get a clear understanding at the beginning."
She said she also hopes to demonstrate the power of giving a voice to the voiceless.
"A lot of the people we interviewed told us that no one else had ever believed them before, or they'd never been heard until we were listening," Kwiatkowski said.
Kwiatkowski is an accomplished journalist who has earned more than 40 journalism awards throughout her career, including Indiana Journalist of the Year, the Tom Renner Award from the Investigative Reporters and Editors organization, a Sigma Delta Chi Award in public service, the Casey Medal for Meritorious Journalism and the Will Rogers Humanitarian Award.
Kwiatkowski's presentation will be the first Robert Mayberry COMM-UNITY event and is sponsored by Grand Valley's School of Communications, Department of Public Safety, Division of Inclusion and Equity and College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, along with the Center for Women In Transition and 8THIRTYFOUR Integrated Communications.
The Robert Mayberry COMM-UNITY Series celebrates Mayberry’s academic vision of diverse academic programs forging a productive connection for students and for the Grand Valley community. The series features intellectuals, practitioners and alumni who have benefitted and/or engage in the kind of cross-disciplinary education and practice that leads to the betterment of localities across the U.S. and the world.
For more information visit https://www.gvsu.edu/soc/
For More Information Contact: Nate Hoekstra in University Communications - (616) 331-8138