When the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) received complaints in 2015 and 2016 about sexual abuse committed by Larry Nassar, its reaction and investigation were too slow. That allowed the former USA Gymnastics and University of Michigan doctor to continue taking advantage of victims before his arrest. This Tuesday, the Department of Justice announced that it has reached an agreement to pay compensation to victims for this negligent action by the FBI. The agreements affect 139 lawsuits for a total of 138.7 million dollars (about 130 million euros) that will be distributed among the plaintiffs.
Over almost two decades and until 2016, when he was arrested by the State of Michigan, Nassar sexually abused hundreds of victims under the excuse of performing medical treatments. Among the victims of abuse in the biggest sex scandal in American sports are Olympic medalists Simone Biles, Aly Raisman and McKayla Maroney.
“For decades, Lawrence Nassar abused his position, betraying the trust of those under his care and medical supervision while evading accountability,” Acting Deputy Attorney General Benjamin Mizer acknowledged in a statement. “These allegations should have been taken seriously from the beginning. “While these agreements will not undo the damage inflicted by Nassar, our hope is that they will help give the victims of his crimes some of the critical support they need to continue healing,” he added.
In July 2021, the Department’s Office of Inspector General issued a devastating report highly critical of certain aspects of the FBI’s response and investigation into the allegations against Nassar. For more than a year, FBI agents in Indianapolis (where the Federation was headquartered) and Los Angeles were aware of the allegations against Nassar, but apparently took no action, that internal investigation revealed.
In July 2015, Steve Penny, the president of the Gymnastics Federation, went to the FBI to denounce Nassar and told the agents that there were three athletes willing to speak with the authorities to report the harassment. He also gave investigators a USB with photos and videos of alleged treatments that the doctor performed on his patients, most of them minors. The agents were barely interested in the case. In September they heard from one of the victims, but then they did not take statements or follow up on leads for more than eight months.
FBI Director Christopher Wray apologized on behalf of the agency when speaking to survivors at a Senate hearing in 2021. “I’m sorry that so many different people have let you down, time and time again,” Wray said. “And I’m especially sorry that there were people in the FBI who had their own chance to stop this monster back in 2015 and failed.”
More than 1 billion
The new agreement is added to others previously reached with other organizations. In total, they amount to more than $1 billion in compensation to the hundreds of women who denounced Nassar for sexually abusing them under the excuse of treatment for sports injuries.
More than 500 athletes obtained compensation of $380 million in 2021 in an agreement with the Gymnastics Federation, whose leadership also ignored the complaints of what was the largest sexual abuse scandal in American sport. Michigan State University (MSU), which employed Nassar, reached a $500 million settlement in 2018 with 332 of the complainants.
Investigators said in 2016 that they had found images of child sexual abuse and filed federal charges against Nassar. Separately, the Michigan attorney general’s office pursued assault allegations that shocked the sports world. The former doctor of the Gymnastics Federation was sentenced in February 2018 to a sentence of between 40 and 125 years in prison for sexual abuse committed against athletes. In January he had already received another sentence of between 40 and 175 years in prison for abuse of women and in December 2017 he was sentenced to 60 years for a crime of child pornography.
“I am deeply grateful. Accountability with the Department of Justice has been a long time coming,” Rachael Denhollander, of Louisville, Kentucky, who is not part of the latest agreement, but was the first person to come forward, told the AP agency. publicly and detail the abuses at the hands of Nassar. “The unfortunate reality is that what we are seeing today is something most survivors never see. Most survivors never see accountability. Most survivors never see justice. “Most survivors never get restitution,” he added.
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