Over 90 women who were sexually assaulted by Lawrence G. Nassar, the former doctor for U.S.A Gymnastics who was convicted on state sexual abuse charges, filed lawsuits on Wednesday against the FBI for failing to investigate Nassar, when credible proof about his crimes was given to them.
According to BBC News, the lawsuits come just two weeks after the Justice Department decided not to charge two former F.B.I. agents accused of bungling the bureau’s 2015 investigation into Mr. Nassar, allowing him to assault more than 70 girls and women for more than a year before Michigan authorities arrested him.
The Justice Department’s own watchdog accused the agents of making false statements about the matter. The F.B.I. director, Christopher A. Wray, testified to Congress last fall that “there were people at the F.B.I. who had their chance to stop this monster back in 2015 and failed.”
The Justice Department decided not to prosecute the agents involved in what Mr. Wray called “gross misconduct” because there was insufficient evidence to bring a federal criminal case.
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Olympic gymnastics gold medalists Simone Biles, Aly Raisman, and McKayla Maroney, as well as national gymnastics medalist Maggie Nichols, are among the plaintiffs, as are former University of Michigan gymnast Samantha Roy and former Michigan State University gymnast Kaylee Lorincz, who now works as an advocate for sexual assault victims.
“My fellow survivors and I were betrayed by every institution that was supposed to protect us; the U.S. Olympic Committee, U.S.A. Gymnastics, the F.B.I., and now the Department of Justice,” Ms. Maroney said in a statement. “It is clear that the only path to justice and healing is through the legal process,” she added.
According to their lawyer, John C. Manly, the plaintiffs are seeking different amounts of money in damages but their total claim exceeds $1 billion.
Mr. Nassar, who was sentenced to up to 175 years in prison, was accused of molesting hundreds of girls and women, several members of the United States Olympic gymnastics teams in 2012 and 2016 included.
In 2015, the FBI’s field office in Indianapolis received evidence of his crimes. Agents then interviewed gymnasts, including Ms. Maroney, who provided detailed testimony.
They ultimately took no action to expand the investigation or stop Mr. Nassar, who continued to treat dozens of patients, including those at Michigan State, the Twistars gymnastics club in Dimondale, Michigan, and Holt High School in Michigan.
According to the Justice Department’s inspector general, the F.B.I. also failed to notify state or local law enforcement about Mr. Nassar’s child abuse accusations, nearly five years after he was arrested on federal child pornography charges. His arrest was the result of an investigation launched by the Michigan State University Police Department after a 16-year-old reported the abuse.
W. Jay Abbott, the bureau’s Indianapolis field office director, and Michael Langeman, an agent in that office, were accused by the inspector general of making false statements to investigators looking into how they and others in the F.B.I. handled the Nassar case.
Mr. Langeman was fired two weeks before Ms. Biles, Ms. Maroney, Ms. Raisman, and Ms. Nichols gave a heart-wrenching testimony before Congress about the F.B.I. ‘s handling of the Nassar case. Mr. Langeman’s mistakes included taking 17 months to document his interview with Ms. Maroney, the first victim of Mr. Nassar to be interviewed by the F.B.I.
Mr. Langeman interviewed Ms. Maroney during a three-hour phone call in September 2015, two months after the bureau learned about Mr. Nassar’s actions from USA Gymnastics. Ms. Maroney was 19 years old and had not even told her mother that Mr. Nassar had sexually assaulted her for many years, beginning when she was 13, for hours and twice a day at the London Games, where she won a gold medal. Ms. Maroney testified before Congress that Mr. Langeman ended the interview with the words, “Is that all?”
According to Ms. Maroney, Mr. Langeman’s late report, filed in 2017, contained several false statements, including that Mr. Nassar had penetrated her anally, and that it had helped reduce her back pain. The report also stated that Ms. Nichols and Ms. Raisman refused to be interviewed by the F.B.I., which they denied.
“They chose to lie about what I said and protect a serial child molester rather than protect not only me but countless others,” Ms. Maroney said before Congress in September.
The inspector general stated in a report released last summer that Mr. Abbott, who retired from the F.B.I. at the time of the investigation, made false statements “to minimize errors made by the Indianapolis field office in connection with the handling of the Nassar allegations.”
He also said that Mr. Abbott was speaking with USA Gymnastics about potential job opportunities while inquiring from the organization about the accusations against Mr. Nassar, actions that violated F.B.I. policy.
According to the inspector general’s report, the FBI mishandled witness interviews and failed to share credible information about abuse with appropriate authorities.
It also discovered that Mr. Nassar sexually abused 70 or more athletes between July 2015, when USA Gymnastics initially reported allegations against him to the F.B.I.’s Indianapolis field office, and August 2016, when the Michigan State University Police Department received a separate complaint.
The women suing the FBI claim they were abused during this time.
“If the F.B.I. had simply done its job,” Ms. Roy said in a statement, “Nassar would have been stopped before he ever had the chance to abuse hundreds of girls, including me.”