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A weekly show from the folks at East Lansing Info breaking down all the news and happenings in East Lansing, Michigan.
Hello, everyone, and welcome to this week's episode of East Lansing Insider. I'm deputy editor, Anna Liz Nichols, and today, we're talking about a big story happening on Michigan State University campus right now. During a September 11 press conference, Michigan State University alerted the public that a former MSU doctor had been placed under arrest the night prior as he faced accusations from two patients who say he sexually assaulted them during their appointments. MSU police chief Mike Yanukowski said during that press conference that on 04/03/2025, the department responded to sexual assault complaint that a patient was bringing the same day she saw then MSU doctor Arpit Saxena. Yanukowsky said on April 7, four days later, Saxena was removed from seeing any more patients and was eventually removed from his position at the university.
Anna Liz Nichols:Now as more information about the timeline of those reports is coming out, many questions are being raised about Michigan State's handling of the investigation, sexiness hiring, and any responsibility the school has to protect the university community and its visitors from sexual violence. For many in the community, as several women have come forward anonymously, the reports coming out that some women say they were assaulted under the guise of legitimate medical care is distressingly similar to the accounts victims gave in court against former MSU and Olympic doctor Larry Nassar who was sentenced to effectively three life sentences after hundreds of women and girls accused him of decades of abuse under the guise of medical treatment. The four days that went by between the initial report of sexual assault and when Saxena was removed from patient care is one point that has been a concern for the public with attorney Lawrence Noah telling the Detroit Free Press that he's representing an anonymous Jane Doe who reports she was sexually assaulted as a patient by Saxena the day after police became aware of the initial allegation. There's concerns also about how long it took the university to alert the state licensing agency of the allegations.
Anna Liz Nichols:One of the Jane Does bringing forth allegations of sexual assault is saying in a court of claims filing that Saxena sexually assaulted her on 01/09/2025 when she sought help for pain after childbirth. According to her attorneys who submitted the court of claims filing who also will be joining us today, She says though Saxena's actions were uncomfortable and confusing at the time of the appointment, she didn't realize at the time that they were sexual in nature until she got correspondence this year in September from MSU Health alerting her of the allegations of sexual assault. That court filing outlines the details of this Jane Doe's account of what she says she endured on the examination table when she was seeking help from a medical professional. Accusing Sexina of touching her in a sexual nature. I'm joined here today by Negan Benigni and Lisa Esser, the attorneys representing this Jane Doe, and from my understanding potentially in the future more individuals coming forward with accusations of abuse against Sexina as more people come forward.
Anna Liz Nichols:In addition to outlining what your client says happened in the exam room with Saxena, Megan and Lisa, the filing asserts that MSU failed to exercise reasonable care in Saxena's hiring in monitoring him, in protecting patients, and if reasonable measures had been taken, the assault could have been and would have been prevented. Lisa, can you tell listeners a little bit about what measures or procedures you think MSU could have taken in this case?
Lisa Esser-Weidenfeller:Yeah. We're really early on in our investigation, but we have a lot of questions in terms of the background checks that they did on this gentleman before bringing him into the program. There's allegations out there that he was abusing patients in his prior residency in Alabama. We know that there was a gap between leaving that prior residency and coming to Michigan. So we're wondering what was going on during that period and what kind of questions that, MSU asked before bringing him into the program.
Lisa Esser-Weidenfeller:Were they talking to his previous supervisors, previous directors, previous employers to find out what had happened with those other patients? If in fact he was abusing patients there, he should have never been brought to East Lansing in the first place, and that certainly would have prevented the assault on our patient or our client and other patients as well.
Anna Liz Nichols:Mhmm. And then... And maybe, Megan, you can answer this. Given some of the information we're now getting, because everyone had an an initial reaction to, oh my gosh. There's another MSU doctor facing similar allegations to what we saw in...
Anna Liz Nichols:Back in the Nassar days. Now that we've heard one... Another Jane Doe coming forward saying she was assaulted the day after the initial, report came in, that there is reporting that MSU took more than a year, nearly a year and a half to alert Laura to the allegations. From a legal standpoint, has MSU done its due diligence from your perspective to prevent future abuse?
Megan Bonanni:No. Clearly. I mean, like you said, according to everything that we've learned so far, there was a delay. MSU did not file a complaint to Laura until 09/11/2026, which is seventeen months after he was dismissed from his his position, and that is a delay that is inexcusable. They didn't talk to any of the former patients.
Megan Bonanni:We know that. And so what they were doing for seventeen months is a complete mystery, and I cannot think of any justifiable reason for that delay. And they have a legal obligation to make that report to Laura in a timely fashion, and they have failed to do so.
Anna Liz Nichols:You know, some of the wording used in your guys' filing to the court of claims that illuminated, you know, what this looked like for your client, it really... I'm reminded of, honestly, several moments during the Nassar case, but particularly the moment during the Ingham County sentencing where judge Rosemary Aquilina read the letter from Nassar that he wrote, and it largely backtracked on his his guilty plea. And I remember with perfect clarity one line, which was what I did in the state cases was medical, not sexual, that he was arguing at the end that his actions or errors were of medical nature and not for his own sexual gratitude... Gratification. He echoed in the letter that...
Anna Liz Nichols:He echoed in the letter what several of the women and girls already said for days during victim impact statements that he had a lot of success and was... Had a lot of acclaim as a doctor, and his medical treatments worked. Mhmm. He would make diagnoses that other medical professionals missed and heal pain that others in his field couldn't. He was so convincing to so many people in his world that in 2004, there was an incident where a 17 year old girl reported to Meridian, Township Police that Nassar had sexually assaulted her.
Anna Liz Nichols:And rather than bring an independent medical expert, to evaluate those allegations to determine if what she outlined was legitimate, is medical treatment, Nassar was able to effectively be own medical expert in the case bringing the police a lengthy PowerPoint explaining his treatment.
Lisa Esser-Weidenfeller:I mean, I think what you're... What what I was thinking when you were talking about it is how this can be so confusing to patients.
Megan Bonanni:Yes.
Lisa Esser-Weidenfeller:When they're assaulted under the guise of medical care. I mean, that's what occurred to me, Anna, when you were like... And I remember that. I remember the Meridian incident and coming in with this PowerPoint and convincing them. And I'll tell you, like, our experience with these cases, and Megan and I have handled...
Lisa Esser-Weidenfeller:I mean, we've represented hundreds of survivors against doctors at this point. Mhmm. And it is very... It's it's extremely confusing because on one hand, you're, you know, you're taught to trust a doctor fully. You come to see the doctor.
Lisa Esser-Weidenfeller:You think, no way in the world would the doctor ever harm me. They're only here to treat me for good, to make me feel better. You know, they would never do anything, nefarious, right, during an exam. And what they do is coupled with their abuse during the exam, they'll provide you legitimate medical care and treatment, right, that makes you feel better. So you walk out of that visit thinking, wow, that was really awkward.
Lisa Esser-Weidenfeller:That was really uncomfortable. I I don't... Like, what just happened? But at the same time, you received medical care and treatment that made your ailment feel better. So it's very confounding in your mind and confusing as to was that legit...
Lisa Esser-Weidenfeller:Was that proper? Was that part of legitimate medical care? Right? Or is that... Was I just assaulted?
Lisa Esser-Weidenfeller:So it's extremely confusing to patients.
Megan Bonanni:We revere doctors. I mean, they are held up to the highest esteem. So in that context and with a physician as the abuser, survivors doubt themselves when they leave that room. And that is a proven phenomenon. And we have seen it hundreds of times, but there's also...
Megan Bonanni:People write about this. And so, you know, not... Maybe not every moment is an assault. And then when they walk out of that room, they they explain it away, and that is the phenomenon. So it's buried deep inside.
Megan Bonanni:It's still trauma that's living, but it's living in a way that it isn't, front of mind. And then when this came out and it's acknowledged by the institution that they were subjected to this, it comes rushing back to them in such a traumatized fashion, in such a strong fashion. It is overwhelming. And I think that is why here, we are seeing, people still in the shadows. You know, we we know how many people he treated, and that number of people has not come forward.
Megan Bonanni:I'm not suggesting he abused every single patient, but there's more out there.
Anna Liz Nichols:Have you guys heard from from more individuals, who who saw the doctor that are are now, bringing forth narratives of abuse?
Megan Bonanni:We have had multiple anonymous inquiries, and I I will leave it to... At that. That is not unusual. And with every case that happens in some way, shape, or form, whether it's a voice mail message or a text message because our cell phones are out there or it's a email.
Anna Liz Nichols:You talked a little bit about how hard it can be to come forward, how it can even be confusing to the point of you don't know that inappropriate behavior by a doctor was inappropriate behavior. I know your client came forward after she got correspondence from the university saying that another incident had been, alleged, and that's what sounds like it spurred her to come forward. I was wondering from your perspective, I know we're coming up on some some legal deadlines. How important is timing in in in coming forward about sexual violence? Because I I know it's very hard to come forward.
Anna Liz Nichols:But we have we have laws that that can prevent certain processes from happening on a, if a timeline is not met?
Megan Bonanni:So we are... Lisa and I are working very hard to change the law, and the changes would allow survivors an adequate time to come to terms with their abuse before taking legal action. Unfortunately, those efforts have, not yet been successful. Mhmm. So we are left with statutes of limitations that are unforgiving and are not necessarily fitting with a with a healing timeline, if you will.
Megan Bonanni:So now because of these notice is going out that MSU sent in September, the clock has started to tick, and anyone who was impacted by this doctor needs to come forward to preserve their legal rights within six months. And so I know there are people that are still in the shadows that are not ready to come forward. And I think a really important message in this podcast is that there are things that we as attorneys can do to protect their anonymity while also preserving their legal rights and their ability to take formal legal action in the future. And that simply keeps a person's options open. In order to make change again at MSU, there is power in numbers.
Megan Bonanni:And so that's another reason, you know, many of the Nassar survivors felt a lot of comfort knowing they had other survivors standing alongside with them.
Megan Bonanni:So this, in a way, is a call to action as well as informative. I mean, I think your podcast can be very, very, powerful in that regard to let people know something they do not know, which is that the clock is ticking.
Anna Liz Nichols:Is there any other element of MSU's response that that is important to note when we're talking about this case?
Lisa Esser-Weidenfeller:I guess I would say what response? I mean, has MSU shared anything with the survivors or the public about the supposed investigation that they were doing, the details of that, the timeline? I mean, as far as I've seen today, I don't think we've seen any substantive response from Michigan State University.
Anna Liz Nichols:Could you maybe even on a personal level say why you guys are getting involved in this?
Megan Bonanni:I mean, we are committed to keeping... Making institutions accountable.
Megan Bonanni:And we're back because this is very important to ours... Our current clients and our former clients. This re traumatizes people, and I... It's disappointing to to have the honest feeling that this isn't a surprise. And I don't know if that makes sense to you, but I was hopeful at the end of the Nassar litigation that policies would change, the university's, approach to these problems would change, and this seventeen month delay is just solidifying that, no.
Megan Bonanni:You know? Things really haven't changed. They very well should... They should have taken him off the job immediately. They should have promptly investigated and reported to Laura.
Megan Bonanni:Those those three things didn't happen.
Anna Liz Nichols:Do you have any thoughts, Lisa?
Lisa Esser-Weidenfeller:I think, Megan, she covered it. You know, one of the reasons we continue to take on these cases, Anna, though, is Megan talked about earlier, we're really trying to effectuate change in the legislature, in the Michigan legislature, on our statute of limitations. And this is just another example of why this state really needs to come up to speed with others and expand the statute of limitations for survivors and victims to come forward. It's so difficult to do that in these situations after a traumatic event like this, and giving these survivors six months in order to do so is just patently unfair and does not serve our justice system at all in any which way. So, again, you know, Megan and I take these cases on to try to continue to make that change in our legislature, and we...
Lisa Esser-Weidenfeller:We're hopeful that at some point, you know, the voices of our clients and these survivors are actually heard and taken seriously in Lansing.
Megan Bonanni:And I'll echo what Lisa said because the current state of the law is a obstacle to justice. And we strive to create is a pathway, a fair pathway, and not every instance of abuse is legally actionable. You know, the the the idea of what it takes to file a lawsuit and the the difficult decision and the the factors that are taken into consideration, these are very, very hard cases. And all we are asking is that people be given a fair opportunity to have a lawyer evaluate their options. And more often than not, we don't pursue litigation for one reason or another.
Megan Bonanni:But here, you know, we have a seventeen month delay. And now that notice has been given, these poor individuals have six months.
Anna Liz Nichols:One major element of this whole narrative isn't just that to many in the community it feels like this is a repeat of the Nassar situation where pretty uniquely the public became enlightened to the fact that a physician could perpetrate abuse under the guise of medical care. Generally, the public, especially children, are living in the belief that medical professionals are trustworthy. We should listen to them. They take an oath to act on our best interest. That was a reckoning the university community, East Lansing and honestly the rest of the world was experiencing as this was unfolding.
Anna Liz Nichols:But something else that I really want to note about the Nassar situation is that no action by local law enforcement, the USA Gymnastics Organization, or Michigan State University happened in a vacuum. Find me one meeting of the Michigan State University Board of Trustees meetings from, I mean, just 2018 when Nassar was sentenced to, say, 2023 when trustees voted to release long sought after documents about the university's handling of the Nassar case to the attorney general, find me even one meeting where a survivor, a parent, or an advocate did not stare down the individuals in charge of the university, beseeching them to foster accountability and healing at the university. I've covered Michigan State University in the Nassar case for several years now. I've been to a substantial amount of these BOT meetings. Sexual violence survivor advocates were a constant presence for years.
Anna Liz Nichols:Michigan State University has heard for years directly from survivors what they would have needed from the university to prevent the abuse and what the school could be doing moving forward to work towards healing. And for years, MSU leaders have made that verbal and written commitment to improvement when it comes to protecting the university community from sexual violence and fostering a better mechanism for reporting injustice. I'll read a portion of a statement distributed by then university president Luanna k Simon in December 2017. She would later resign from her position weeks later amid Nassar's sentencing, but I figured it would be important to hear the words from the president at the helm as this tragedy was unfolding. She wrote back in 2017, and these are her words.
Anna Liz Nichols:For me, this situation also reinforces the importance of taking a hard look at selves and learning from what happened because it should never happen again. Since fall of twenty sixteen, we have engaged external experts to comprehensively review various programs and recommend changes to strengthen our policies and procedures. That includes reviews of our Title IX program, the MSU Health Team, and how medical services are provided to student athletes. Details can be found at the Our Commitment website. While much has been achieved, I understand that strengthening a policy or introducing a new procedure today doesn't change what happened to these women in the past or the pain they feel.
Anna Liz Nichols:That's the excerpt I wanted to read to you. That Our Commitment website is still live, so is the statement from former president Simon. This is all online, and there was significant media coverage of just about every detail of the Nassar case and MSU's actions after. The commitments MSU made included things like forming a relationship violence and sexual misconduct expert advisory work group that created a strategic plan to address sexual and relationship violence and stalking to foster a safer campus community. Their research and input led to several creations and expansions of services at the university.
Anna Liz Nichols:The school opened the MSU sexual assault health care program, which provides medical care to sexual assault survivors. They also overall adjusted policies and oversight at the school. The university does assert that in its progress, it has strengthened its relationship violence and sexual misconduct policy and better addresses violations, but also implements better preventative policies to ensure incidents are stopped before they occur. Like I said, none of this has happened in a vacuum. Survivors and their parents have been present and vocal members of the university community and have demanded clearly and sternly that nothing like this ever happens again, that Nassar never happens again.
Anna Liz Nichols:I'm joined by one of these parents of survivors that has spent years calling for accountability from the university, Valerie Von Frank, who is local to the area and serves as the executive director of Parents of Sister Survivors Engage, also known as Posse, an advocacy group born in the aftermath of the Nassar case. I'm interested, Valerie, given that this is kind of the constant narrative we've gotten from Michigan State University over the years that they're doing things to improve outcomes and reporting mechanisms for survivors. Given the allegations made against a doctor on MSU campus and the university's actions following that first report. I'm curious what your first reaction to this all has been and maybe some of the thoughts you've had since that initial news hit the public now that we've had some time to reflect and more information has come about about the timeline of events that these Jane Does are presenting.
Valerie Von Frank:It was a complete shock to learn that that there had been another physician treating patients on campus who had done the exact same things, according to one of the Jane Does, that Larry Nassar had done because we've been through this before. On the other hand, it was not a shock in some ways. I guess it was a shock to find out about it, but it was not a shock that it was happening because we have been asking for things, asking to have a dialogue, with MSU about how their procedures and policies could actually be strengthened to prevent it from happening again, and we've been unable to to initiate that dialogue through any of the May... Any of the major changes in president. We did have a little bit of a conversation with Satish Utpa, but the presidents who were there or going to be there for a long time, Sam Stanley, Theresa Woodruff, and Kevin Guskowitz, have really not been open to that dialogue.
Anna Liz Nichols:I was reflecting on this today that though the current MSU board of trustees doesn't have any of the twenty eighteen winter, like January when the sentencing was happening, it doesn't have any of the same members anymore. These are, elected positions, eight year terms. But plenty of the board has been around for years and years by virtue of these eight year terms and is well versed in in what happened during, the Nassar days. I was wondering, in terms of having a informed reaction, I wonder what, your thoughts were on that.
Valerie Von Frank:Yeah. That's a really good question because right now in this election in November, we have two incumbents who are coming up, Brianna Scott and Kelly Tebay, who were elected in large part over this case in 2018. They're the only remaining board members who were part of the events of that time. And both of them ran on supporting survivors, and both of them have been a huge disappointment. Kelly T.
Valerie Von Frank:Bay, who, has said that she is a survivor herself, rarely speaks up about anything at all, and Brianna Scott seems more set on internal board politics and stirring up strife than she does on doing anything for survivors. She has not not ever met with Posse and, has been openly hostile. Hostile. She particularly came in between survivors and the six thousand secondret documents.
Anna Liz Nichols:In in your perception, how much engagement has been required of survivors and their parents to get the visibility platform and recognition for for a need to to improve systems at MSU? How much effort has been put into that endeavor over the course of several years?
Valerie Von Frank:Just going to board meetings, we have been doing that now for eight years, most of the time in person, and sometimes when, by Zoom when somebody is out of town. But we've been consistently present at board meetings. We have... Posse has spoken consistently at board meetings and asked the board to to do better. Some of the survivors came particularly when we had to resort to a lawsuit to free those 6,000 documents, get them over to the AG who had been asking for them, so she could review that information and try to determine whether people knew earlier than they had been saying or who knew what and when.
Valerie Von Frank:It is a huge toll on the survivors to come back to campus, to come to a board meeting. They were not all students, but MSU represents something particularly traumatic, obviously, in their lives. And to come back to campus is a strain, a mental, trigger. And it is... It costs energy, and it sometimes leads to physical pain because the brain body connection is very real, and the trauma that it stirs up can can trigger physical symptoms in some survivors.
Valerie Von Frank:So it's been a tremendous cost to try to continue to ask for accountability at the university. Our whole goal has been about making sure it doesn't happen again, and we're treated as though we're the enemy.
Anna Liz Nichols:You know, given the similarities between, like you mentioned, what happened with the Nassar case and some of the the accounts, these Jane Does are now giving on a different doctor, MSU still has the... Our commitments page live, and I I mentioned that earlier pages. But our commitments to the community, which include improving systems for reporting, implementing policies that work to prevent, relationship and sexual violence. In your opinion, has MSU done enough on its part to prevent incidents like NASA happening again?
Valerie Von Frank:That's a really excellent question, Anna. I think their emphasis has been on what comes after an assault has already happened, and that's not necessarily where the emphasis needs to be. Their first commitment was to come up to the minimum standards of the Title IX Act, and they were very proud of a 75 box checklist of things that they needed to do just to meet the minimum. I don't think that they have ever gone above and beyond in what they need to do in the prevention area. They now have a center for survivors in which survivors can both find support and get a rape kit done.
Valerie Von Frank:Anyone from the community can go to that, but they they've really have not concentrated their efforts on prevention. There's been... I'm just gonna say it because I'm so tired of not being blunt with people. There are people there who have tried to make their careers off of this case and used the case to write papers or do whatever they needed to to promote basically themselves in their research. However, what we need is real prevention, and I know we don't have it in in the health care system because they have never taken seriously One of our initial recommendations and something we actually talked to the US DOE, you know, yeah, the US Department of Education Office of Civil Rights about when the Office of Civil Rights was meeting with them was having chaperones present.
Valerie Von Frank:Now they say that they do that for all sensitive procedures, and what we argued with the OCR was that would not have stopped Nassar. And that's exactly what we've seen today because the person has to announce that it's a sensitive procedure, which by definition takes away the element that they're using, that these doctor... These two doctors have used. This current one's...
Valerie Von Frank:It's it's alleged, but it's the surprise and the sort of intimation that this is routine, and it's not special, and it's not a sensitive exam. And that's what they have used. That's what Nassar used to get away with what he got away with.
Anna Liz Nichols:This was actually a point that both Valerie and the attorneys I spoke to brought up. Here's what Lisa Esser had to say about this.
Lisa Esser-Weidenfeller:Their policy to... Is to have chaperones and intimate and sensitive exams. Right? Like, that was that was the policy change after Nassar.
Lisa Esser-Weidenfeller:And what we're talking about here is osteopathic manipulative medicine. Part of the treatment provided in that setting is massage and hands on massage of all areas of the body. That is certainly an intimate and sensitive examination and can be Yeah. A sensitive treatment, especially in a situation like here where I... Our client was coming in weeks after childbirth with hip pain, and you're talking about a doctor that's going to massage that area of her body.
Lisa Esser-Weidenfeller:To me, that's a sensitive exam, and it should go under the policy of a chaperone being present for that type of care and treatment. And there wasn't a chaperone present. So That's a failure. That's a failure by Michigan State and enforcing even the policy that they have in place after Nassar.
Anna Liz Nichols:But here's more from Valerie.
Valerie Von Frank:This goes back to what we talked about, on on which procedures and policies were strengthened. And, it grabs headlines when you start a survivor center, and it's very showy. But a policy... Having policies that don't take immediate effect when a report comes in of a sexual assault does not help at all. And we're talking about something that has already happened, and the person continues to work there.
Valerie Von Frank:For Nassar, it was fifteen months after the university knew officially that these charges were coming that, he continued to work there. And that cost the university, if people are interested in dollar costs and not human costs, quite a bit of money for those patients who were seen after after that in that fifteen month time. And now we have a patient who was seen, one that we know of who was seen after the report came in from the first Jane Doe. To not have policies in place that can get through HR enforcement and get everybody on the same page immediately to remove that person from seeing students, seeing patients, interacting with the public and campus community is a failure, in my opinion, huge failure on MSU's part. That should be...
Valerie Von Frank:Should have been one of the first things that they did was what is the emergency response in a serious case. And I just find it almost beyond belief that that was not one of the first things that they did. I think as parents and part of the survivor community, the retraumatization in part is we felt like those of us who have been working on this feel as though we've given ten years, almost a decade of our lives to try to make improvements, to help others out of this, to make things better so it wouldn't happen again. And it's almost like a decade of our lives wasted and effort and pain and time that now they just are almost meaningless because MSU didn't do the basic right thing.