5 Moments That Led to Lou Anna Simon’s Resignation at Michigan State

Lou Anna K. Simon resigned on Wednesday night as president of Michigan State University, capping a remarkable week in which support for her leadership almost completely eroded. Here are five moments that helped determine her fate:

1. In 1997 a high-school student told the university’s head gymnastics coach that she had been assaulted by Larry Nassar.

In a wide-ranging investigation The Detroit News found that 14 people at the university were told of abuse by Larry Nassar, the former university physician who has since been found guilty on seven counts of sexual assault and has been accused of abuse by nearly 200 women. One of those people, according to the newspaper, was Kathie Klages, the university’s head gymnastics coach at the time.

“She said I must be misunderstanding what was going on,” the former high-school student, Larissa Boyce, recalled to the News. Ms. Klages then asked other gymnasts whether they had been similarly abused, and one said she had, the newspaper reported. But then the coach discouraged Ms. Boyce from reporting the incident, and told Dr. Nassar about what had happened. “Had I known she was such good friends with him, I would not have said anything,” Ms. Boyce recalled to the News. Ms. Klages, who retired last year, declined to comment to the newspaper through her lawyer.

Ms. Simon would not become the university’s president until 2005, but many of her critics have laid the responsibility for a culture tolerating Dr. Nassar’s abuse — which persisted for roughly two decades, including the entirety of Ms. Simon’s time as president — at her feet.

2. In 2014 Ms. Simon was notified that an unnamed physician had been the subject of a Title IX complaint and a police report. He was not penalized as a result of either, and continued seeing patients.

In its investigation The Detroit News also found Ms. Simon had caught wind of Dr. Nassar’s behavior.

An alumna of the university, Amanda Thomashow, in 2014 reported an instance of abuse by Dr. Nassar to the university and the university’s police department. The Title IX investigation that followed found that the doctor’s behavior — which Ms. Thomashow said included massaging her breast and vagina — was not sexual in nature, according to the newspaper. The police report also came to naught, with a detective eventually telling Dr. Nassar that the county prosecutor would not file charges, and adding that he should have a chaperone in the room with patients, a measure that had come at the direction of Dr. Nassar’s boss at the university, according to the newspaper.

Ms. Simon has admitted to being told of the complaint. “I was informed that a sports-medicine doctor was under investigation,” Ms. Simon told reporters last week. “I told people to play it straight up, and I did not receive a copy of the report. That’s the truth.”

Critics of Ms. Simon have used her failure to take additional action as evidence that she failed to protect victims from Dr. Nassar.

3. In 2016 The Indianapolis Star began reporting on sexual-abuse claims within USA Gymnastics, for which Dr. Nassar was a physician. In September of that year, the newspaper first named the doctor as having been accused by two former gymnasts.

The university fired Dr. Nassar eight days after the Star named him. The next month, he was charged with child sex abuse. The month after that, he was indicted on federal child-pornography charges.

The publication of the claims against Dr. Nassar raised questions about who at the university knew what, and when.

4. For a January sentencing hearing, Judge Rosemarie Aquilina invited any victim who wanted to speak to appear in the courtroom.

Judge Aquilina’s decision helped fuel a media sensation in Lansing, Mich., where nearly 200 victims of Dr. Nassar read emotional statements in front of both him and the judge. Several speakers invoked Ms. Simon’s name, and called for her resignation. Some criticized her for not appearing at the sentencing hearing, to which Ms. Simon responded that she did not want to distract from the victims’ statements. She attended the hearing on the second day, sitting in the back row.

On that day Ms. Simon was confronted by a former Michigan State gymnast, Lindsey Lemke, who said the university had not contacted her about a fund that would aid victims of Dr. Nassar. Ms. Lemke told a local newspaper she felt as though Ms. Simon was “trying to manipulate us, make us feel that she’s not responsible when she is responsible, 100 percent, as president of the university.”

5. While praising Ms. Simon’s leadership, a trustee, Joel Ferguson, said on a radio show on Tuesday that “there’s so many more things going on at the university than just this Nassar thing.”

The remarks, which Mr. Ferguson later apologized for, fueled a perception that the university had sought to play down the extent of Dr. Nassar’s abuse. Another claim by Mr. Ferguson — that the board had discussed Ms. Simon in a recent meeting for only 10 minutes — prompted rebukes from two fellow trustees, one of whom said the board had discussed a “succession plan.”

The conflicting statements within the board created the perception that the university’s leadership was in chaos, and that Ms. Simon might be more vulnerable than previously thought. Condemnations quicky followed. In the space of one day, Wednesday, the Michigan House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a resolution calling for Ms. Simon to resign. A second trustee made a similar call. And the university’s faculty athletics representative wrote in a letter that she did not “have the desire or the heart to support this administration going forward.”

Ms. Simon resigned on Wednesday night, saying it was “only natural that I am the focus” of the anger surrounding Dr. Nassar’s abuse.

Andy Thomason oversees breaking-news coverage. Send him a tip at andy.thomason@chronicle.com. And follow him on Twitter @arthomason.