FBI continues to fail child sex abuse victims despite reforms after botched Nassar investigation, regulator finds

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The FBI continued to mishandle allegations of child sexual abuse even after its infamous botched investigation into disgraced USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar, according to an audit by the U.S. Justice Department's inspector general released Thursday.

Because of these failures, allegations of child sexual abuse went unanswered for months while minors continued to be victims of sexual abuse, the investigation found.

In one particularly egregious example, the FBI failed to investigate a tip of child abuse by a registered sex offender for over a year. The agency also failed to report the allegation to local law enforcement and the offender's probation officer.

While the FBI did nothing, another child was abused for 15 months, according to the inspector general.

The FBI also failed to document actions law enforcement took to protect a 2-year-old child who was sexually abused during an investigation that dragged on for more than two years, the review said. The agent assigned to the case had to conduct too many investigations at once, the inspector general said.

A senior FBI official defended the bureau in a phone call with reporters on Thursday, saying that the “overwhelming majority” of the issues identified during the audit were “compliance issues,” meaning that “investigative actions were taken and notifications issued, but the case file contained inadmissible or missing materials.”

The official added: “We do not deny that there are cases where investigative steps should have been taken,” calling these failures “totally unacceptable.”

The audit addressed problems identified by the department's top regulator in its scathing investigation into the way the FBI investigated the allegations against Nassar.

In the Nassar investigation, which began in 2018 and resulted in a final report in 2021, the inspector general found that senior officials at the FBI's Indianapolis field office did not respond to the Nassar allegations “with the utmost seriousness and urgency that they deserved and required.”

The regulator also found that the field office made several fundamental errors in its response to the allegations and failed to notify state or local authorities of the allegations or take steps to contain the ongoing threat posed by Nassar.

Since then, the FBI has implemented several changes in the way it reports, investigates and documents allegations of child sexual abuse, the inspector general said.

Despite these changes, the Inspector General found that FBI employees often failed to properly report allegations of child abuse to local law enforcement or failed to report suspected ongoing abuse to local authorities within 24 hours, as required by FBI policy.

In nearly half of the 327 cases examined as part of the audit, there was no evidence that FBI agents fulfilled their obligation to report allegations to local law enforcement, the inspector general said. Only 17 percent of cases were reported with all the required documentation.

At a congressional hearing on the Nassar investigation in September 2021, FBI Director Christopher Wray vowed that the bureau would not allow such failures to happen again.

“I'm sorry for what you and your families have been through. I'm sorry that so many people have let you down time and time again,” Wray told lawmakers at the time.

“And I'm especially sorry that there were people in the FBI who had their own chance to stop this monster in 2015 and failed, and that's inexcusable,” he said. “That should never have happened, and we're doing everything in our power to make sure that never happens again.”

The FBI said in a statement Thursday that “ensuring the safety of children is not just a priority for the FBI; it is a solemn duty that we are held to the highest standards,” and that the bureau is “committed to maintaining the public's trust by implementing the necessary improvements” to ensure children are protected.

Earlier this year, the Justice Department reached a $138.7 million settlement with more than 100 of Nasar's victims because the FBI initially failed to investigate the sex crime.

He was sentenced by a state court to up to 175 years in prison for sexually abusing young female athletes over a period of twenty years under the guise of medical treatment.

This story is brand new and will be updated.