Nassar continued assaults year after FBI informed
For more than a year, an FBI inquiry into allegations that Larry Nassar, a respected sports doctor, had molested three elite teenage gymnasts followed a plodding pace as it moved back and forth among agents in three cities. The accumulating information included instructional videos of the doctor’s unusual treatment methods, showing his ungloved hands working about the private areas of girls lying facedown on tables.
But as the inquiry moved with little evident urgency, a cost was being paid. The New York Times has identified at least 40 girls and women who say Nassar molested them between July 2015, when he first fell under FBI scrutiny, and September 2016, when he was exposed by an Indianapolis Star investigation. Some are among the youngest of the now-convicted predator’s many accusers — 265 and counting.
The three alleged victims then at the center of the FBI’s inquiry were world-class athletes; two were Olympic gold medalists. Nearly a year passed before agents interviewed two of the young women.
The silence at times drove the victims and their families to distraction, including Gina Nichols, the mother of the gymnast initially known as “Athlete A”: Maggie Nichols, who was not contacted by the FBI for nearly 11 months after the information she provided sparked the federal inquiry.
“I never got a phone call from the police or the FBI” during that time, said Gina Nichols, a registered nurse. “Not one person. Not one. Not one. Not one.”
The FBI declined to answer detailed questions about the speed and nature of its investigation or to provide an official who might put the case in context. Instead, it issued a 112-word statement asserting that the sexual exploitation of children “is an especially heinous crime” and that “the safety and well-being of our youth is a top priority for the FBI.”
Asked by The Associated Press why families and coaches weren’t alerted, W. Jay Abbott — who led the FBI office in Indianapolis, to which the accusations against Nassar were first reported — said: “That’s where things can get tricky.”
“There is a duty to warn those who might be harmed in the future,” said Abbott, who retired in January. “But everyone is still trying to ascertain whether a crime has been committed.”
He said that “everybody has rights here,” including Nassar.
The agency’s statement left unaddressed the oft-repeated claim by USA Gymnastics officials that after initially presenting the sexual assault allegations to the FBI in July 2015, they came away with the impression that federal agents had advised them not to discuss the case with anyone. The ensuing silence had dire consequences, as the many girls and young women still seeing Nassar received no warning.
Among them was Emma Ann Miller.
By the summer of 2015, Emma Ann, the only child of a single mother, was both a competitive dancer and just another Michigan kid immersed in the joys and dramas of middle school life.
And once a month beginning when she was 10, she went to Suite 420 in a six-story office building close to Michigan State University in East Lansing, where her solicitous doctor, who encouraged everyone to just call him Larry, molested her.
According to her lawyer, Emma Ann had about a dozen sessions with Nassar between the summers of 2015 and 2016.
“Whenever he asked if my lower back hurt, he would always find a way to touch me down there,” she said, explaining that Nassar would say that her pelvis was in need of adjustment. “Whether or not I said my back hurt, he would always find a way to, to …”
The young girl paused. “I think I’ve blocked out a lot of what he did to me,” she said finally.
In late spring of 2015, Nichols’ personal coach, Sarah Jantzi, overheard the 17-year-old girl talking at the Karolyi ranch in Texas with another elite gymnast, Aly Raisman, about Nassar’s invasive and inappropriate techniques. The alarming information was quickly shared with the girls’ parents and, by June 17, with officials at USA Gymnastics.
Gina Nichols, Maggie’s mother, recalled telling Steve Penny, then the president of USA Gymnastics, that the police had to be called immediately.
On July 27, gymnastics officials contacted the FBI in Indianapolis, where USA Gymnastics has its headquarters. The next day, its chairman, Paul Parilla, and Penny met with FBI agents. Forty-one days had passed since USA Gymnastics first received the report of the sexual abuse of one of its charges.
The gymnastics officials provided the agents with contact information for three gymnasts: Nichols, Raisman and someone emerging as the central complainant: McKayla Maroney, then 19, a retired Olympic gold medalist.
In late July or early August of 2015, FBI agents interviewed Maroney by phone. It was the first substantive interview of an alleged victim of child molestation.
Meanwhile, Nichols and Raisman had received no word from any law enforcement official about the allegations now lodged with the FBI.
Some of the delay appears to have been related to questions concerning federal versus state jurisdiction, as well as jurisdiction within the FBI itself. Although the Indianapolis bureau had received the information, the alleged sexual abuse by Nassar had taken place in Texas and in Michigan, where he lived and worked. And Maroney lived in California.
Finally, the absence of information about the federal investigation prompted Penny and Parilla, the USA Gymnastics officials, to visit the FBI’s Los Angeles bureau in early May.
“As time passed, concern about a perceived lack of development prompted Board Chair Paul Parilla and CEO Steve Penny to report the matter a second time to a different FBI office,” USA Gymnastics said in a statement to the Times on Friday.
On May 17, the FBI finally interviewed Maroney in person. It had been 294 days since the FBI was first notified of accusations against Nassar.
By the close of 2016, Nassar was in custody. By the close of 2017, he had been convicted. Given that he has been sentenced to nearly two centuries in prison, Nassar will likely die there.