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Grassley slams FBI for failing to make changes since Nassar sex abuse case
U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley is renewing his criticism of the FBI after a new government report finds the agency failed to make promised changes following the nation’s largest-ever sports sex abuse scandal.
Former U.S. Olympic Gymnastics Doctor Larry Nassar was arrested in 2016 on allegations he sexually assaulted more than 260 girls and young women. Grassley says the FBI still hasn’t made key changes in how it investigates child sex abuse reports.
“They aren’t giving proper attention to sexual abuse, and they just aren’t doing their job,” Grassley says. “They haven’t improved their technology and their reporting regulations.”
Grassley says a recent audit from the Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General finds the FBI botched the Nassar investigation, and while the FBI committed to making meaningful reforms, it hasn’t implemented most of them.
“The FBI, going back maybe eight, nine, ten years, when Nassar was abusing these gymnasts, and some of this was reported to the FBI,” Grassley says, “and the Indianapolis office sat on it for months and maybe into a couple years.”
Grassley says the audit found the FBI has not issued new policy guidelines directing employees to report child sex abuse to the authorities and hasn’t fixed vulnerabilities that prevented law enforcement from swiftly bringing Nassar to justice. It also found the bureau still heavily relies on the outdated Sentinel system it used during the Nassar investigation, as opposed to the updated Guardian system that pushes alerts for timely reviews.
“But here we are seven, eight, nine years later,” Grassley says, “and we’re finding out that they aren’t following up on the mistakes they made in Indianapolis.”
Grassley has sent a letter to the FBI’s director, demanding answers on the bureau’s failure to implement necessary changes to improve its practices regarding child sex cases.
In 2017, Nassar was sentenced to 60 years in federal prison, and in 2018, he was sentenced to several more decades in a Michigan state prison.
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