The FBI had one job to do and they blew it. Attorneys representing over 90 women are sharpening their teeth as they prepare to defend a $1 billion lawsuit against the agency for bumbling the investigation into former USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar’s sexual abuse.
They’ve accused the FBI of not acting on its file cabinet full of complaints against Nassar until the scandal surrounding his years of abuse made national headlines.
The women say the agency had enough evidence to stop Nassar as early as July 2015 but didn’t consider the complaints serious enough to warrant an investigation. They never even spoke with any of the young female athletes who had filed them.
Olympic gymnasts Simone Biles, Aly Raisman, McKayla Maroney, and Maggie Nichols, who were all four in the spotlight when the news about Nassar broke, have their sights set on $50 million apiece.
Two others, Kaylee Lorincz, and Hanna Morrow, who later got publicly dragged into the mess, are seeking $42.5 million each. The rest of the 90 women or so hope to each walk away with a cool $10 million in change.
The higher-ups at the Bureau have yet to respond to the recently filed claim. Under the Tort Claims Act, they have six months in which to either fight back or pay up.
The claim states that “the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) possessed credible complaints from numerous sources and corroborating evidence of Dr. Larry Nassar’s (Nassar) sexual assaults of young women and children over the course of a number of years and across the globe.”
Here’s where the fingernails scrape the chalkboard: “FBI officials, who possessed this knowledge and were in a position to end Nassar’s predation, were grossly derelict in their duties resulting in Nassar sexually assaulting approximately 100 young women and children between July 28, 2015, and September 12, 2016, and conspired with the highest-ranking officials within the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee and USA Gymnastics, Inc to conceal this known sexual abuse from foreseeable victims.”
Maggie Nichols said that the FBI was fully aware of Nassar’s abuse and of the danger he posed to young girls when she reported her abuse in September of 2015. She said that instead of busting Nassar, the agency worked with USA Gymnastics to keep the doctor’s abusive habits under wraps as he kept committing more of it.
It wasn’t until the media broke the news about Nassar, 421 days after Nichols had filed the complaint, that the FBI was left with no other choice but to open an actual investigation. In no uncertain terms, she said, “It’s time for the FBI to be held accountable.”
Nassar is no longer a threat. He’s enjoying the next 60 years of his life in federal prison where his new friends think highly of child sexual predators. If he lives through that, he’s got another 40-175 years waiting for his stretched-out behind at the state prison level.
Be this as it may, the FBI chose politics over the emotional well-being of the young female athletes who they knew were being victimized by the lecherous doctor, and the ladies have the evidence to prove it.
The FBI should be ashamed, and there should be no trial required. These abused women have suffered enough and the money they’re asking for isn’t just for them. It’s for the rest of the women who were too ashamed to come forward in this case, and for the thousands of other cases of predatory sexual abuse that have gone, and continue to go, unreported.
This is a statement in the making and one that’s being shouted from rooftops.
