FBI struggling to respond to tips of child sex abuse cases, audit says

An audit published Thursday by the U.S. Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General criticized how the FBI dealt with tips about child sexual abuse cases in recent years. The audit was initiated in response to a July 2021 report on the FBI’s handling of the sex abuse allegations against former USA Gymnastics Dr. Larry Nassar. He was sentenced in 2018 to decades in prison for abusing numerous children.

How is the FBI doing now, and what did this new audit find? The audit examined more than 300 cases of physical sexual abuse crimes against children that the FBI investigated. The investigations took place from October 2021 to February 2023, after the Nassar report was published.

The FBI has updated its policies, training programs, and systems to improve its handling of what it termed hands-on child sex abuse cases, according to the audit. However, the audit found cases in which FBI staff failed to comply with either laws or agency policies regarding the mandatory reporting of suspected child abuse. In other cases, the agency didn’t adequately serve abuse victims, according to the audit. The agency still struggled to properly transfer investigations between field offices, the audit found. Additionally, the FBI failed to respond to allegations of active and ongoing child abuse within 24 hours. In fact, the report noted that more than 40 cases—13 percent of the cases the DOJ reviewed—were forwarded to FBI Headquarters because they required immediate attention.

How has the FBI responded to the audit? In a statement to WORLD, the FBI insisted that ensuring the safety and security of children is a solemn duty. The FBI’s efforts to combat crimes against children are among the most critical and demanding undertakings the agency does, according to the statement. The FBI is committed to implementing the improvements made to its Violent Crimes Against Children program in 2018 and 2019, the agency said.

Why was the audit needed? The July 2021 report found numerous instances where the FBI violated its own policies during the Nassar investigation. Among other things, the report alleged that victims’ interviews and other items of evidence were improperly documented, that allegations were not transferred to the relevant FBI offices, and that agents made false statements to cover up the FBI’s mishandling of the case.

Those findings led FBI Director Christopher Wray in September 2021 to issue a formal apology to Nassar’s victims. In his statement, he called the FBI’s handling of the Nassar case inexcusable, saying it should never have happened and that the agency would do whatever was necessary to ensure it doesn’t happen again.

Dig deeper: Read my report on Rachael Denhollander, the first sex abuse survivor to publicly come forward in the Larry Nassar investigation.