MICHIGAN: Police have arrested a former Michigan State University dean who supervised ex-USA Gymnastics physician Larry Nassar before the sports doctor was arrested and convicted of sexually abusing female athletes, the county sheriff said on Monday.
“William Strampel is currently lodged at the Ingham County jail,” Ingham County Sheriff Scott Wriggelsworth told Reuters.
Wriggelsworth declined to say on what charges Strampel, 70, was arrested until the defendant was arraigned at a court hearing scheduled for Tuesday.
A jail website listed the former dean of Michigan State’s College of Osteopathic Medicine as an inmate there but gave no other information.
The Detroit Free-Press newspaper reported that he faces multiple charges, at least one a felony.
An attorney for Strampel, who has been on medical leave from the university since December, could not be reached by Reuters for comment on Monday evening.
Michigan State University President John Engler said in February he was moving to revoke tenure for Strampel for failing to enforce 2014 guidelines created for Nassar in treating young athletes after complaints of sexual misconduct against him.
The college has been criticised for its handling of complaints about Nassar stretching back for years.
Michigan State terminated Nassar in September 2016 for his failure to follow those protocols, including having another person present when he performed the procedures.
Numerous women said they were assaulted even after the guidelines were put in place.
Nassar was sentenced in February to up to 125 years in prison after some 200 young women testified about decades of abuse at his hands.
He had already received a sentence up to 175 years in a neighbouring Michigan county, and was sentenced to a 60-year federal term for child pornography convictions.--REUTERS