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FORTUNE.COM // JULY 2019
O
NE OF THE AIMS of a mediator or special
master is to be both fair and swift.
Meetings to determine a survivor’s
payout—the worth of her suffering—can be
surprisingly short, and in most cases, the
mediator’s decision isn’t open to appeal. The
number is final.
Some Nassar survivors I spoke with felt
that the amount of money they received was
fair and appropriate; others didn’t. And for
many, a newly difficult phase began after the
settlement—as they realized that money alone
couldn’t right what had been made wrong.
Donna Markham’s daughter Chelsey was
one of countless girls who bounded into gyms
in Michigan in the early 1990s in hopes of
making an Olympic team, like the heroes who
graced the posters on her bedroom wall. As a
child, prosecutors allege, Chelsey was sexually
assaulted by Nassar during a doctor appoint-
ment. After the abuse, she spiraled into drugs,
alcohol, depression, and angry spells that cul-
minated with her taking her own life in 2009.
She was 23 years old.
Markham has received her allocation, and
she’s one of several survivors who felt per-
plexed by the math behind the payout and
overwhelmed by the paperwork and logistics.
Abuse “just eats away at your self-worth, your
self-esteem,” Markham says. That fact, so clear
to her, was something she felt the process
couldn’t account for. “You can’t put a price on
a human life,” Markham says. “And how do you
make a determination on an award settlement
when Chelsey had her entire life ahead of her?”
In Markham’s telling, the most important
outcome of the process wasn’t monetary: She
has forged strong bonds with other women in-
volved in the case and is engaged in advocacy
work for those who were harmed. “I didn’t
expect to get anything,” Markham says. “I just
wanted Chelsey’s story to be told.”
Some survivors opted not to talk with Betti-
nelli. Having already testified in legal proceed-
ings or given impact statements, they could
let those records speak for them. Morgan
McCaul, who was a high school student when
she joined the group suing Nassar, is now
enrolled at the University of Michigan: “I just
felt like [a meeting] would be another thing
on my plate that was unnecessary,” she says.
McCaul received a payout earlier this year.The $500 million Michigan State settlement in the Nassar case
allocates $425 million to more than 330 claimants who came
forward to sue before Dec. 6, 2017; the remaining $75 million is
set aside for survivors who came forward after that date. (There
are already 160 people in that second wave, sparking concerns
about whether the fund is sufficient.) Roughly one-third will pay
for fees for attorneys, including for time spent in the settlement
process, according to someone familiar with the matter.
The task of distributing the $425 million pool falls to Wil-
liam Bettinelli, a former California judge who was appointed
last July by the federal district court overseeing the case. (He is
being paid from the overall settlement sum, as well.) In roughly
30 years as a professional mediator, Bettinelli has mediated
cases involving catastrophic personal injuries, wrongful death
claims, and environmental disasters, according to his firm’s
website; his office did not respond to multiple requests for inter-
views over several months.
According to people familiar with the MSU case, Bettinelli has
authorization to approve payouts of up to the low seven figures
per person (before taxes and fees). People with knowledge of the
process say Bettinelli is following an “allocation protocol” that
includes conducting phone interviews with survivors to assess
their settlement amount. Among the questions Bettinelli may
ask: whether the abuse happened to them as minors, the dura-
tion and frequency of the abuse, and the nature of the abusive
acts themselves. The mediator can also take into account such
factors as the risk a survivor incurred by coming forward or any
retaliation she faced for blowing the whistle.
In many cases, a survivor may bring forward evidence that
wasn’t used in Nassar’s trials—psychologist evaluations and bills,
for example. Several survivors submitted journal entries docu-
menting the toll of abuse. New evidence can be submitted to the
mediator as paperwork, be brought up in a meeting, or both.
One goal of a settlement process is that survivors won’t have
to relitigate their case in order to receive their claims. Still,
claimants often find themselves recounting horrific details of
their experience—especially if that information doesn’t already
exist in a trial record. And those conversations, even when a
survivor stands on a mountain of evidence, can be awful.
Among the harmful impacts that Mittleman, the lawyer for
many of the plaintiffs, says his clients have reported are at-
tempted suicide, bills for stays at psychiatric hospitals, hair loss,
gastrointestinal issues, and sleep disturbance. It’s not uncom-
mon for therapy for those coping with the consequences of abuse
to cost $150 to $300 per session, with multiple sessions a week
or month, often for years. Jobs have been lost, marriages frayed.
The math of a settlement process ideally takes all of this into
account. But Mittleman and other advocates say that talks some-
times place excessive emphasis on the number or duration of the
assaults. In the context of wide-ranging harm, Mittleman asks,
“Is 60 or 100 penetrations really worth more than one time?
Because in my opinion, one time is too many.”