Victims of harassing doctor "Nassar" testify before the American "senators"
Victims during their testimony.
US Olympic gold medalist and gymnast Simone Biles testified on Wednesday that the FBI "turned a blind eye" to multiple reports of abuse by former US gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar.
Nassar is behind bars on charges linked to the sexual assault of more than 200 female athletes.
According to the "BuzzFeed" website, Biles testified in tears, along with gymnasts, McKayla Maroney, Aly Raisman and Maggie Nichols, before the US Senate Judiciary Committee, about how the FBI dealt with Nassar, to see complaints that the office "" He ignored their reports for more than a year, allowing the doctor to continue harassing dozens of female athletes.
According to Biles, "We suffered, and we continue to suffer, because no one in the FBI, [US gymnastics team], [US Olympic and Paralympic Committee] did what was necessary to protect us."
"We deserve answers. Nassar is where he belongs, but whoever enabled him deserves accountability," she added.
Maroney confirmed that she first reported Nassar's abuse to the FBI in July 2015.
"The FBI did not report the abuse to me (...) and when they finally documented my report 17 months later, they made false allegations about what I said," Maroney said.
"They chose to lie about what I said and protected a serial pedophile rather than protecting me, not just me but countless others."
On their part, Nichols and Raisman emphasized that it took more than a year for the FBI to interview them after they reported the violation to the United States gymnastics team.
Nichols noted that the former US gymnastics chief, Steve Penny, told her to "remain silent" about Nassar, so that the investigations that the FBI was conducting would not be affected.
The testimonies of Nassar's victims come two months after a report by the US Department of Justice's Inspector General said the FBI had failed to properly investigate allegations that Nassar had sexually assaulted gymnasts.
In his report, excerpts of which were quoted by The Washington Post, the inspector general said that FBI officials gave misleading or false answers when confronted with these failures.
The report asserted that, according to civil court files, Nassar caused approximately 70 victims between a woman and a girl at the time the allegations were first reported to the FBI, and when Michigan officials arrested him on the basis of separate information.
The case against Nassar has led to several investigations into why the US Olympic Committee and Michigan State University, where Nassar worked, failed to investigate complaints about him going back years.
Nassar was serving a prison sentence for child pornography charges and pleaded guilty to two sets of molestation charges in Ingham and Eaton counties.
In February 2018, a Michigan court sentenced Nassar to an additional 40 to 125 years in prison for molesting gymnasts, after he had already been sentenced to 175 years.
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