This week, a monetary cost was assigned to the FBI’s colossal failure to properly investigate allegations of sexual abuse against Larry Nassar, who was the team doctor for USA Gymnastics. The U.S. Department of Justice will pay $138.7 million to settle claims from 139 people, including elite Olympic gymnasts Simone Biles, McKayla Maroney and Aly Raisman. Multiple sources familiar with the talks told NBC News that it took two years of negotiations between DOJ lawyers and lawyers for the victims to reach this settlement. That said, no amount of money can erase the lifetime of trauma inflicted by Nassar’s actions — and the FBI’s inaction.
No amount of money can erase the lifetime of trauma inflicted by Nassar’s actions — and the FBI’s inaction.
Nassar pleaded guilty in 2017 to federal charges stemming from his handling of thousands of images of child pornography. He was sentenced to 60 years. The next year, in one Michigan county, Nassar, who also worked at Michigan State University, was sentenced to between 40 and 175 years in prison for molesting young girls under the guise of treatment. He was given another sentence of 40 to 125 years that same year in another Michigan county. More than 265 patients have said Nassar victimized them.
Allegations against Nassar were first reported in 2015 to the FBI field office in Indianapolis, where USA Gymnastics is based. After eight months of inaction from agents there, USA Gymnastics officials contacted FBI officials in Los Angeles. That office didn’t urgently respond either. It took over a year from the time of the first report to the FBI for the agency to conduct an investigation, and at least 40 girls and women say they were molested by Nassar during that gap.
A DOJ inspector general inquiry determined that “despite the extraordinarily serious nature” of the allegations, FBI managers in Indianapolis failed to act with the “utmost seriousness and urgency that the allegations deserved and required.” Significantly, that report found that W. Jay Abbott, the special agent in charge of the Indianapolis field office, made materially false statements to the IG agents to downplay errors by his office. A supervisory special agent from that office, according to the inspector general’s report, made false statements in his summary of a victim interview, omitted material information and made materially false statements in two interviews with IG investigators.
It gets worse.
The IG report says Abbott “violated FBI policy” and exercised “extremely poor judgment under federal ethics rules” when he, without authorization and while still discussing the Nassar allegations, began communicating with a USA Gymnastics executive about a job opportunity with the U.S. Olympic Committee. According to that report, Abbott applied for the U.S. Olympic Committee job, but denied doing so when questioned by IG agents two different times.
If you’re thinking that the conduct of these agents, particularly the special agent in charge in Indianapolis, merits discipline or even criminal charges — I’m with you.
If you’re thinking that the conduct of these agents, particularly the special agent in charge in Indianapolis, merits discipline or even criminal charges — I’m with you. But, according to FBI Director Christopher Wray, Abbott retired before the FBI could investigate his conduct, and the supervisory agent who handled the Nassar case was removed from agent duties and then left the FBI. Once employees leave the FBI, there is little to no recourse in terms of discipline. For reasons known only to DOJ decision-makers, the department declined to prosecute those two agents, even after members of Congress and victim representatives demanded another review. A decision not to prosecute these agents must feel like yet one more injustice to Nassar’s victims.
If there is any bright spot in this horror story, it’s that Wray, who became director two years after the initial Nassar allegations, took swift action across the agency to significantly decrease the odds that a debacle like this will happen again. In testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2021, Wray explained that the FBI was changing policies on handling reports of sexual abuse and sexual assault. The FBI manual that governs domestic investigations was updated to clarify the documentation and retention requirements for allegations received prior to the opening of an investigation or to a decision that more investigation is needed. The manual was changed to require recurring reviews every 30 days to monitor the status of sexual abuse allegations. Further, new policy was drafted to make clear that supervisors can’t approve documents they created themselves — for example, a memo closing a sexual assault case. Perhaps most significantly, if there’s any doubt about federal jurisdiction, or some other time-consuming delay, the FBI must quickly disseminate the allegations to local or state law enforcement partners. Those policy changes won’t help Nassar’s victims, of course, but they should help victims going forward. As for this week’s settlement, we should hope the money DOJ provides to these victims will help with the counseling and therapy they may need to courageously live with the trauma they say they experienced at the hands of Nassar, who is unlikely to ever walk out of prison. The fact that so much of that trauma was generated by FBI inaction adds insult to the injuries they should have never had.
