Nassar victims suing FBI
Biles among women seeking $1B over failed probe
Dozens of women who claim they were sexually assaulted by former USA Gymnastics team physician Larry Nassar have submitted claims for more than $1 billion from the FBI, accusing the bureau of failing to stop the disgraced doctor from preying on more athletes.
Among the complainants are Olympic gold medalists Simone Biles, Aly Raisman and McKayla Maroney.
“If the FBI had simply done its job, Nassar would have been stopped before he ever had the chance to abuse hundreds of girls, including me,” former University of Michigan gymnast Samantha Roy said in a statement.
Nassar, 58, was sentenced to up to 175 years in prison after being accused of assaulting hundreds of women throughout the 2000s, including while working with the 2012 and 2016 U.S. Olympic women’s gymnastics teams.
He’s also serving 60 years in federal prison on child-pornography charges.
USA Gymnastics alerted the FBI to allegations from three women in 2015 and agents interviewed several victims, including Maroney, but failed to take any action, including opening an official investigation, according to the lawsuit filed Wednesday. Agents also never reported the allegations to federal or state authorities.
Instead, Nassar continued to abuse more than 70 more women and girls between July 2015 and his November 2016 indictment, according to a report from the Justice Department’s inspector general released last summer.
Last year, FBI Director Christopher Wray admitted failings in his own department and blamed a supervisory FBI agent who failed to act, then lied about it. The agent has since been fired.
“I’m especially sorry that there were people at the FBI who had their own chance to stop this monster back in 2015 and failed,” he said during a September Senate hearing during which victims, including Biles, Maroney, Raisman and Maggie Nichols, testified. “And that’s inexcusable.”
The Justice Department said last month that it would not pursue charges against two agents who provided “inaccurate or incomplete information” to investigators about the Nassar allegations.
“My fellow survivors and I were betrayed by every institution that was supposed to protect us — the U.S. Olympic Committee, USA Gymnastics, the FBI, and now the Department of Justice,” Maroney said in a statement Wednesday.
“It is clear that the only path to justice and healing is through the legal process.”
A spokesman for the Department of Justice declined to comment when reached by the Daily News Wednesday and instead pointed The News back to Wray’s 2021 comments.