Gymnasts seek $1B from FBI over Nassar case

More than 90 women, including Olympic gold medalists Simone Biles, Aly Raisman, and McKayla Maroney, are asking the FBI for compensation for its mishandling of sexual abuse accusations against former USA Gymnastics sports doctor Larry Nassar. The combined claims amount to $1 billion. Others have won claims of negligence against the FBI in other cases, including when bureau agents received a tip that could have prevented a shooting at Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018 but did not act on it.

What did the FBI do wrong in the Nassar case? USA Gymnastics took accusations against Nassar to the FBI’s Indianapolis field office in 2015, but after nine months of inaction from that branch, the sports organization brought the matter to the bureau’s Los Angeles office in 2016. That office looked into it but also did not open a formal investigation. Later that year, Michigan State University police arrested Nassar while he was still employed as a doctor at the school. In 2017 he pleaded guilty to sexual assault and is now serving decades in prison. A Justice Department inspector general report found that the FBI mishandled evidence in the case and violated bureau policies. Nassar victimized at least 70 women between the original 2015 report and his arrest. 

Dig deeper: Read Mary Jackson’s article in Relations on gymnastics and its sexual abuse problem.

—WORLD has corrected this article to reflect that the women have filed administrative claims, not a civil lawsuit.