And Izzo defended Nassar and actively covered up the rape.
Can you support that claim?
I read the article where Izzo was attacked, and he had nothing but sympathy for the victims, and went to great length to complement them oh their courage. I'm not aware of him defending Nassar once the truth came out, or even prior. How anyone could defend Nassar, at least once there was a cascade of claims, defies reason. Izzo got attacked despite expressing nothing but sympathy for the victims, because he was pressed by a reporter with a specific question on changing the administration. He voiced support for the President & Administration of the University --AND THAT is what became instantly political. A prominent victim's mother pounced on it with some choice words for him. I can understand people wanting (or not) the University leadership to change, but that's a far cry from defending Nassar. By the way, I have nothing but sympathy for that mother, and share her outrage that Nassar got away with it for so long. I also happen to agree with her on holding the highest folks at MSU responsible. Being in Michigan, I've had the unfortunate ability to speak to someone closer to what happened, and it's a strange tale of far too much trust, lack of oversight, and even parents *who were in the room at the time* not knowing exactly what was going on. MSU made some very bad tactical decisions on handling it, for the usual bad reasons (fear of lawsuits). Eventually they were forced into better behavior.
As far as the other suggestion about directly covering up a rape by his players, that seems inconceivable. That implies he knew whether or not they were guilty (i.e. that a rape did in fact occur,) but chose to engage in felony crimes to knowingly cover it up. I did a search to try and find out more, and what I found was that A) She's sued the University, which means she's after compensation, B) she's "considering" filing a police report now that 4 years have elapsed since the alleged rape. C) I couldn't find many details on her account, despite all the time that's elapsed, nor could I find anything saying that a prosecutor had taken up the criminal case, which is unfortunate, assuming her allegation is true. To me, that suggests to some degree, there are issues with having hard evidence (cue Beavis and Butthead). I'm not disputing anything she has to say, just pointing out the difficulty in making assumptions at this point. I'm not a fan of mob justice (with the rare exception that sometimes the justice system gets it so wrong, I kinda wish one of the family members would take things into their own hands).