Former U.S. gymnastics coach John Geddert was found dead just hours after Michigan's attorney general announced 20 human trafficking charges against him.
The head coach of the U.S. gymnastics team at the 2012 Olympics was charged Thursday with 20 counts of human trafficking, including forced labor resulting in injury and trafficking involving a minor, as well as charges of racketeering, lying to police, and criminal sexual contact. Geddert had agreed to turn himself in to police Thursday afternoon, but never showed up, a spokesperson for the attorney general said. Police soon found he had died by suicide.
Geddert had close ties with Larry Nassar, the former team doctor for the U.S. and Michigan State gymnastics teams who was sentenced to more than 100 years in prison for sexually assaulting and abusing patients, many of them minors. Geddert owned Twistars Gym in Michigan, where some of Nassar's victims said he assaulted them. One of the criminal sexual conduct charges also alleges Geddert assaulted a girl under the age of 16.
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"John Geddert used force, fraud and coercion against the young athletes that came to him for gymnastics training for financial benefit to him," Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel told reporters Thursday. She then detailed the disordered eating, "suicide attempts and self-harm," and "extreme emotional abuse and physical abuse" the victims say they endured, adding that many "still carry these scars from his behavior to this day."
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