This episode is incredibly special as Danielle McGuire and I speak with attorney Angela Povilaitis, who is a nationally recognized voice for victims of sexual assault, domestic violence, and child abuse.

Currently, Angela is an attorney with the State of Michigan whose work focuses on sexual assault, domestic violence, and other crime victim rights issues.

Prior to that, she was a senior attorney in the State Attorney General’s Criminal Division, and lead prosecutor on multi-victim domestic violence, stalking, and sexual assault cases. 

And for 12 years, she served as an assistant prosecuting attorney for Wayne County, working on cases of child abuse, child and adult sexual assault, child homicide, and other felony cases.

Povilaitis gained worldwide attention in 2018 as lead prosecutor in the case against former USA Gymnastics physician Larry Nassar, who was convicted in January 2018 of sexually assaulting numerous young girls. 

Attorney Povilaitis was instrumental in arranging for more than 200 of Nassar’s victims to give impact statements to the court during his sentencing hearing, while the world watched live on television. This was perhaps one of the defining moments of the #MeToo movement. 

In this episode of Conversations, Povilatis talks about her journey to becoming a prosecutor, what led her to focus on sexual and domestic violence cases, and what it means to be victim centered, offender focused, and trauma informed. 

She also talks about three distinct cases that I’d like to provide some background about to give you context. 

The first case: The People vs. Father James Rapp 

Rapp was a Catholic priest accused of sexually assaulting young boys at Lumen Christian High School in Jackson, MI, in the 1980s. In 2015, Povilaitis filed 19 sexual assault charges against Rapp, who eventually pleaded no contest. The night before Rapp’s sentencing in April 2016, Povilaitis organized a dinner and meeting for about 10 victims. The next morning, several gave impact statements during the sentencing.

The second case: The People vs. Calvin Kelly  

The defendant was an interstate truck driver serial rapist who preyed upon vulnerable women, including those struggling with drug addiction and poverty. Led by Povilaitis and her cold case sexual assault team, the Michigan Attorney General’s office linked Kelly to 11 reported rapes in 4 states spanning over 20 years. Povilaitis issued charges in 2014 and after many adjournments, delays, and appeals, a two-week jury trial began in September 2017 where 3 victims testified. Kelly was acquitted despite overwhelming evidence. Shortly after his acquittal, Kelly was charged with three rapes in Tennessee. At the time of this podcast, he remains in jail awaiting trial.   

The third case and most widely known: The People vs. Larry Nassar 

Nassar is one of the most prolific sexual abusers in US history, having abused well over 500 victims. His criminal case began with a report from one victim in August 2016 and quickly grew to hundreds of athletes from over a dozen different sports, ranging from gold-medal-winning Olympians and National Team members to club-level gymnasts.  

But before the world knew his name, a case was built and led by Povilaitis and her team from the MSU Police department and Attorney General’s office.  

As the lead prosecutor on his state sexual abuse charges, Povilaitis issued charges, presented evidence, questioned witnesses, and drafted a historic plea agreement where more than 200 victims gave impact statements while the world watched and learned the horrors of sexual abuse and trauma.  

If this wasn’t enough exceptionalism for this episode, there’s more.

I took the backseat and welcomed Danielle McGuire to host this episode. 

Danielle is an award-winning author and historian of racial and sexual violence. Her first book, At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape and Resistance–a New History of the Civil Rights Movement from Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power (published by Knopf) won the Frederick Jackson Turner Award and the Lillian Smith Award and is used widely in colleges around the country.

Danielle is a Distinguished Lecturer for the Organization of American Historians and has appeared on National Public Radio, BookTV (CSPAN), CNN, MSNBC.com, and dozens of local radio stations throughout the United States and around the world. 

This is truly a dynamic duo.

So without further ado, here is the far-reaching conversation between Angela Povilaitis and Danielle McGuire.

Audio Transcript

Danielle:    Okay. So Angie and I know each other, I think, first through youth sports. We’re both soccer moms and we share a very competitive spirit. So I think it’s only fitting that we start this conversation with a little sport talk. So I was doing a little bit of research on you, and I read that while you were in high school in Baldwin, Michigan you earned 13 varsity letters. Most people don’t even earn one. So I was like what? 13 varsity letters. That’s impressive.

Angela:   Absolutely. I’m impressed with your research skills there because that was a deep dive. So Baldwin, for the folks that don’t know, is a smaller community in northern Michigan. It’s about equal distance between Traverse City and Grand Rapids, about an hour from each of those larger towns, about 30 minutes from Lake Michigan. So it is a class D school. I think they changed it in the Michigan High School Athletic Association, but I was an athletic kid. I’m about 5’9”. So I was about 5’9” at 12 and got recruited to play basketball on our basketball team to be the center. I had a nickname at the time of Totem Pole, which was a little traumatizing, but I loved it. I loved everything about basketball. I was thinking back to some of the great Pistons years here and was a huge Pistons fan and would record the games on a VHS to watch all summer and practice in my backyard. So it’s a tiny town. There were 45 people in my graduating class. So I did get to play four years of varsity on our basketball team. We did have a JV team, but it was kind of fun to be there as a freshman. Then I played four years of volleyball and then four years of track. So I think that brings us to 12. Then my senior year I got to play softball with my sister who is a freshman, so that was really special. She was a very good pitcher and I decided to kind of do two sports that season.

I was a good student. I was student body president.  I was involved in a lot of different activities, but sports were incredibly important to my childhood and growing up. I think an integral part of my competitive spirit transitioned well to my later career as a prosecutor and a trial attorney. So many lessons I learned being part of a team, having a goal, working towards it, handling defeat, being resilient. All of those came from the basketball courts of Baldwin, Michigan.

Danielle: Wow. That’s incredible. I read also that you actually were inducted into the Baldwin High School Basketball Hall of Fame.

Angela:   Yeah. Yeah, that was a couple of years ago. The other thing I’m proud of in a humble brag kind of way was I was All Area Dream Team for two years in a row in our local paper. The transition of that, right, is I was a big fish in a little pond. I was not good enough to play Division I or Division II. I think I had a slight interest in maybe pursuing basketball, but I mean would have had to make it on a Division team. I really wanted to go to what I thought was the best school in the state and arguably one of the best schools in the country at the University of Michigan. So basketball was going to have to stop after my senior year.

Danielle: So when you went to college, you didn’t do any intramural sports or anything like that?

Angela:   Oh I did play intramural. Yeah. Just not at that level.

Danielle: What’d you do?

Angela:   Oh goodness. Basketball, volleyball, and broomball which was a little bit of insight into my future as a hockey mom. That was fun too.

Danielle: Did you say broomball?

Angela:   Yeah, broomball.

Danielle: I don’t know what that is.

Angela:   You’re from Wisconsin. You didn’t play broomball in Wisconsin?

Danielle: I didn’t.

Angela:   So it’s like hockey but on a basketball co