More than 90 gymnasts are suing the FBI for a billion dollars in the "Larry Nassar case"
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Champion Simone Biles and more than 90 other US gymnasts are suing the FBI today for $1 billion in damages for "negligence" in the sexual assault scandal involving former doctor Larry Nassar.
"The FBI knew Larry Nassar was a danger to children when the assault of which I was a victim was first reported in September 2015," gymnast Maggie Nichols said, quoting a statement from the law firm Manley, Stewart, and Vinaldi.
She accused the FBI officers of "working" with the USA Gymnastics Federation and the US Olympic Committee "for 421 days to conceal this information from the public, which allowed Nassar to continue assaulting girls and young women."
Larry Nassar, 58, is serving a life sentence for sexually abusing more than 300 female athletes, most of them minors, during two decades between 1996 and 2014, including female stars from the national team that participated in the London 2012 Olympics and Rio de Janeiro 2016. He worked there for the USA Gymnastics Association, as well as at Michigan State University and at a gymnastics club.
The first complaints against him were filed in July 2015 with the local FBI office in Indianapolis.
The investigation was quickly dropped and it took another report in May 2016 for the FBI to start a new investigation.
In its indictment report, the Justice Department's Inspectorate General stated that FBI agents "made several fundamental errors, and violated many FBI rules."
Despite this, the ministry announced in late May that it would not prosecute the erring officers.
However, former Olympic champion McKayla Maroney said in the same statement, "I and the other victims were betrayed by all the institutions that were supposed to protect us," referring to the federation, the Olympic Committee, the FBI and the Department of Justice.
"It is clear that our only path to justice and healing is through legal procedures," she added.
In September 2021, Maroney, Biles and Nichols criticized before a Senate committee the inaction of sports authorities and the police in confronting the charges against Nassar.
The FBI has not commented on this, recalling the testimony of FBI Director Christopher Wray before a Senate committee last year.
He then apologized to the doctor's victims, acknowledging that "the fundamental mistakes made in 2015 and 2016 should never have happened."
In December 2021, US sports authorities agreed to pay $380 million in compensation to Larry Nassar's victims.
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