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topicnews · August 29, 2024

Regulatory agency criticizes FBI investigation into child abuse after Nassar

Regulatory agency criticizes FBI investigation into child abuse after Nassar

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WASHINGTON – Even after the infamous Larry Nassar case, a Justice Department watchdog said Thursday that the FBI continued to fail to adequately investigate reports of child sexual abuse. Inspector General Michael Horowitz flagged 42 cases over the past three years that “required immediate attention” but did not receive it. That included one case in which a reported victim continued to be abused 15 months after the initial report.

The report suggested that the FBI continued to have problems with poor investigations, failing to report cases to local law enforcement as required, and failing to adhere to the agency’s own policies.

The problems were at least partly due to staffing shortages. Each FBI agent investigating child abuse handled dozens of cases. Several FBI officials told auditors they lacked the resources to investigate the cases. One agent assigned to about 60 cases said this burden caused cases to “fall through the cracks,” the report said.

“Today’s report found that since receiving the allegations against Nassar, the FBI has implemented training, policy updates and system changes to improve the way it handles allegations of crimes against children,” Horowitz said in a letter accompanying the report. “However, we have identified numerous instances in which the FBI has failed to respond appropriately to such allegations.”

The FBI claims it has taken a new approach.

“We have made mistakes, we recognize that, and we are making efforts to ensure that such mistakes do not happen again,” a senior FBI official said in a phone call with the media shortly before the report was released.

The FBI agreed with all 11 of Horowitz’s recommendations and corrected two of the problems in the process of preparing the report. The FBI argued that the criticism was largely related to paperwork issues.

“Most of the incidents reported were due to inadequate documentation of completed investigative steps or involved investigations where no further action was required,” wrote FBI Assistant Director Michael Nordwall in his response to the report. “In the few cases where we identified the need for additional investigative steps or reporting to state, local, tribal, or territorial law enforcement, we took care to ensure that all required steps were completed.”

The report comes three years after Horowitz criticized the FBI for failing to respond promptly to allegations of sexual abuse of female athletes by Larry Nassar, the former doctor for the United States Gymnastics Association. Nassar was convicted of abusing more than 100 female athletes, including Olympic champions Simone Biles, McKayla Maroney and Aly Raisman.

Nassar’s sexual abuse only ended when the allegations became public in September 2016 through an investigation by IndyStar, part of the USA TODAY Network. Nassar is serving a prison sentence of over 100 years.

The report found:

What were the shortcomings in the FBI’s investigation into child sexual abuse?

The FBI opened 3,925 child sexual abuse cases from October 1, 2021, to February 26, 2023. Horowitz reviewed 327 incidents and found that 42 of them were flagged for the FBI “because we believed they may require immediate attention.” The cases included:

  • In December 2021, the FBI’s National Threat Operations Center received an allegation that a registered sex offender had sex with a minor and crossed state lines. After investigators reviewed the file, the FBI interviewed the victim and offered its services one year after receiving the allegation. Investigators learned that the suspect had abused another minor 15 months after the first allegation.
  • In February 2022, a social worker reported allegations to the FBI that a suspect had sex with a minor while traveling across state lines. The FBI investigated, but the case was not referred to local law enforcement and was later marked inactive. In response to questions from the examiners, the FBI submitted the case to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, which declined to prosecute. The FBI agent assigned to the case had 44 pending cases.
  • In September 2022, the FBI received an anonymous tip that a suspect with multiple prior convictions for sex offenses was trafficking minors. Investigators found no referral to local law enforcement. The FBI said the original investigating officer was transferred and administrative oversight of the case was delayed. The new case officer was assigned one year after the initial complaint and three months after investigators flagged the case for the FBI.

In response to the 42 reported incidents, the FBI said it would add the documentation to the file in 17 cases and take further action in 18. In five cases, the FBI determined no further action was necessary, and two were flagged for FBI information only.

Part of the problem was attributed to staffing. Auditors found that 15 FBI field offices had proposed reorganizing their staff to deal with crimes against children from 2020 to 2022. However, only one agent in one field office was approved for the transfer, according to the report. FBI headquarters urged field offices to use available resources, including referring cases to state and local partners and other investigators.

Despite an increase in caseloads over the past three years, the number of officers responsible for crimes against children fell from 432 in 2022 to 429 last year, according to the report.

What did the inspector recommend to the FBI?

At the top of Horowitz’s 11 recommendations is one that has remained unresolved since the Nassar report: The FBI must develop and implement a method to monitor compliance with the FBI’s reporting requirements for suspected child sexual abuse and take appropriate remedial action.

Further recommendations are:

  • Ensure that all incidents involving an immediate or ongoing threat to a child are addressed within 24 hours as required.
  • Inform victims about the services available to them.
  • Improve lead monitoring to ensure they are covered in a timely and appropriate manner.

“Overall, the results of our review demonstrate that the FBI needs to improve compliance with policies and laws in several areas, including mandatory reporting of suspected child abuse, provision of victim services, transfer of incidents between field offices, self-authorizations, and response to allegations of active or ongoing child sexual abuse,” the report said.

The FBI agreed with the recommendations and implemented two of them during the preparation of the report. One was updating procedures for employees handling allegations to describe when incidents are time-sensitive. The other was updating field office policies for documenting and responding to new allegations of sexual exploitation of a child.

“The FBI is constantly improving, we continue to make changes to processes, policies and training to ensure no mistakes are made,” said a senior FBI official.

What did Horowitz find out in the Nassar investigation?

In the July 2021 Nassar report, Horowitz found that the FBI field office in Indianapolis failed to respond promptly to allegations of sexual abuse and made fundamental errors in its response. The Indianapolis office also failed to notify other agencies — the FBI field office in Lansing, Michigan, where Nassar worked at Michigan State University, or state and local officials — to address the threat.

Although the Indianapolis office received the first complaint in July 2015, the Lansing office learned of the allegations after Michigan police searched his home and discovered child pornography in September 2016. During that time, Nassar was treating gymnasts at Michigan State University, a high school in Michigan, and at a sports club.

The Justice Department agreed in April to pay a group of survivors $138.7 million over FBI mishandling of sexual abuse allegations against Nassar. MSU agreed to pay $500 million to survivors, and USA Gymnastics reached a $380 million settlement with Nassar’s victims.

The report says the FBI failed:

  • to properly handle evidence such as a USB stick belonging to Stephen Penny, the president of the US Gymnastics Association.
  • to transfer the investigation to the office in Lansing, the most likely location for possible federal crimes.
  • to document, until February 2017, an interview conducted in September 2015 regarding a gymnast’s allegations of sexual assault by Nassar.

Maroney said at a Senate hearing after the report was released that she told the FBI her full story of abuse in 2015. But when the agency finally documented the report 17 months later, “they made completely false claims about what I had said.”

According to Horowitz, Jay Abbott, the FBI special agent in charge of the Indianapolis office, made false statements about the gymnast’s interview in order to downplay his office’s mistakes.

“Abbott violated FBI policies and exercised extremely poor judgment” when communicating with Penny about a possible job with the U.S. Olympic Committee, the inspector general’s report said.

Horowitz made four recommendations to the FBI, which the FBI accepted. The recommendations were:

  • Revise policies to more clearly describe when FBI agents must contact and coordinate with state and local law enforcement authorities regarding allegations of crimes against children.
  • Clarify policies regarding when a supervisor conducts investigative activities.
  • Develop a policy on when telephone interviews with suspected victims of child abuse are appropriate.
  • train employees in the guidelines.

Contributors: Aysha Bagchi

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