Nassar victim alleges Michigan State interim president offered payoff

Kaylee Lorincz, a 19-year-old gymnast who was sexually assaulted by disgraced former USA Gymnastics and Michigan State University physician Larry Nassar, has accused Michigan State interim president John Engler of offering her money, $250,000 to be exact, when the two parties were discussing an ongoing civil lawsuit against the university for enabling the predatory behavior of the 54-year-old Nassar.

Nassar, 54, was sentenced to a total of 140 to 360 years in prison over three different sentencing periods since this past December. He has been accused of sexually assaulting over 260 people, mostly female gymnasts, over the course of roughly two decades under the guise of medical treatment.

Nassar is currently serving his first sentence, which is a 60-year federal prison sentence that he was given after being charged with three counts of child pornography in December. He is doing so at United States Penitentiary Tucson, which is a maximum-security federal prison in Tucson, Arizona that offers a sex offender program for sexual predators such as him.

At Nassar's second sentencing hearing in January earlier this year, Lorincz was one of 169 people to issue victim impact statements in an Ingham County, Michigan courtroom in front of Judge Rosemarie Aquilina and Nassar himself.

This sentencing hearing resulted in Nassar being sentencing to between an additional 40 and 175 years in state prison after being charged with seven counts of sexual assault. In February, he was sentenced to between an additional 40 and 125 years after being charged with three more counts of sexual assault.

Lorincz's request to work with Michigan State in an attempt to improve the way the university has handles sexual assault cases on campus, which unfortunately include more than just those involving Nassar, was reportedly denied by Engler, as he stated that they could not work together until civil litigation was complete.

It was at that point when the interim president of the school offered the 19-year-old a check in the amount of $250,000.

Here is what Lorincz had to say about her discussion with Engler, the former Michigan governor who took over the as the university's interim president in February following the resignation of former president Lou Anna Simon at the end of January, according to ESPN.com.

"I just wanted a five-minute conversation to introduce myself and to let President Engler be able to put a face with the word survivor since he has not met with any of the girls. Five minutes turned into an hour. President Engler's main focus was dollar signs."

However, Emily Gerkin Guerrant, who is Engler's spokeswoman, claimed that she was in the room when this was going on and that that was not what happened. Here is what she had to say about the matter, according to ESPN.

"My interpretation of the discussion was not that he was saying, 'I'm offering you $250,000. It was a discussion about the civil litigation and how it was going on."

This particular situation involving Lorincz and Engler adds yet another layer of uncertainty to this terrible scandal.