The United States Justice Department has agreed to pay around 100 victims of disgraced former Team USA doctor Larry Nassar approximately $100 million for the FBI’s failures to properly investigate reports of Nassar’s sexual assaults against America’s top gymnasts and others, according to a report Wednesday in the Wall Street Journal.
If the agreement becomes final, it would push the total amount of settlements in the sprawling legal cases against Nassar to nearly $1 billion. Two attorneys, who between them represent more than 300 of Nassar’s victims, would not confirm details of the proposed settlement when reached Wednesday by ESPN.
The FBI’s failures in the Nassar case are well documented. At a 2021 Senate hearing, FBI director Christopher Wray apologized to survivors of Nassar’s abuse, saying it was “inexcusable” that agents “had their own chance to stop this monster back in 2015 and failed.”
After conducting a five-week internal investigation in the summer of 2015, officials from USA Gymnastics first told agents within the FBI’s Indianapolis field office that three Team USA gymnasts had said they were sexually assaulted by Nassar during treatment sessions.
A report by the Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General found that in the summer of 2015 “despite the extraordinarily serious nature of the allegations and the possibility that Nassar’s conduct could be continuing, senior officials in the FBI Indianapolis Field Office failed to respond to the Nassar allegations with the utmost seriousness and urgency.”
That July 2021 report also found that field agents “did not undertake any investigative activity” for five weeks and then neglected to properly transfer the matter to the field office in Lansing, Michigan, where Nassar continued to treat patients as an osteopathic physician at Michigan State University.
After conducting just one interview in September 2015, the FBI conducted “no investigative activity in the matter for more than eight months” the Office of Inspector General report concluded, while Nassar’s sexual assaults continued, involving approximately 100 women.
According to Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal report, the claimants in the yet-to-be finalized settlement include former Olympic gymnasts Simone Biles, Aly Raisman, McKayla Maroney and former Team USA member Maggie Nichols. All four women testified at a September 2021 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing about the human cost of the FBI’s failures.
“It truly feels like the FBI turned a blind eye to us,” an emotional Biles told the Senate hearing.
“By not taking action from my report, they [the FBI] allowed a child molester to go free for more than a year,” Maroney testified. “They had legal evidence of child abuse and did nothing.”
If finalized, the $100 million paid by the Justice Department to dozens of Nassar survivors would follow a $380 million settlement in 2021 with USA Gymnastics and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee and a $500 million settlement in 2018 with Michigan State University.
