Olympic gymnast McKayla Maroney on Wednesday (September 15) told U.S. lawmakers she feels betrayed by FBI agents, after they failed to seriously investigate former USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar, despite her telling them he had sexually abused her.
Maroney is one of four athletes, along with Simone Biles, Aly Raisman and Maggie Nichols, who testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee as it probes the FBI’s mishandling of the investigation.
Maroney recalled how in 2015 she spent three hours on the phone telling the FBI the details of her story that her own mother had not even heard, including accounts of sexual abuse she endured during the Olympic games in London.
It was not until July of this year, however, that she said the Justice Department inspector general revealed in a scathing report
what the FBI actually did with the information she provided: Failing to document it for a year and a half, and misrepresenting what she told them about her experiences.
Gymnast McKayla Maroney told lawmakers “to have my abuse be minimized and disregarded by the people who were supposed to protect me just to feels like my abuse was not enough, but the truth is, my abuse was enough and they wanted to cover it up.”
Wednesday’s hearing comes after the Justice Department’s Inspector General Michael Horowitz in July issued a scathing report which blasted the FBI for botching its investigation in a series of errors that allowed the abuse to continue for months.
“It is not only that the FBI failed to do its job, systematically and repeatedly. It is also the cover-up – the cover-up that occurred when FBI agents made materially false statements and deceptive omissions,” Senator Richard Blumenthal said, adding that the Justice Department has declined to prosecute the agents.
“My hope is that the Department of Justice, which was invited today and has declined to appear, will match your courage by explaining why those lies by FBI agents did not lead to criminal prosecution,” he said.
The FBI’s investigation into Nassar started in July 2015, after USA Gymnastics President and CEO Stephen Penny reported the allegations to the FBI’s Indianapolis field office.
That office, then led by Special Agent in Charge W. Jay Abbott, did not formally open an investigation. The FBI only interviewed one witness months later, in September 2015, and failed to formally document that interview in an official report known as a “302” until February 2017 – well after the FBI had arrested Nassar on charges of possessing sexually explicit images of children in December 2016.
The office also failed to share the allegations with state or local law enforcement agencies.
Horowitz also said that Abbott, who retired from the FBI in 2018, also violated the FBI’s conflict of interest policy by discussing a possible job with the U.S. Olympic Committee while he was involved with the Nassar investigation.
Neither Abbott nor the other unnamed supervisory special agent who botched the Nassar probe were prosecuted for their actions.
Olympian Biles blasted USA Gymnastics and the FBI in blunt, tearful testimony on Wednesday for standing by while Nassar abused her and hundreds of other athletes.
“We have been failed and we deserve answers,” Biles told the Senate Judiciary Committee. “It really feels like the FBI turned a blind eye to us,” she said.
Raisman, meanwhile, expressed frustrations that more has not been done to investigate USA Gymnastics or the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee for covering up Nassar’s abuse for years.
“Why did none of these organizations warn anyone? USAG and USOPC have a long history of enabling abuse by turning a blind eye. Both organizations knew of Nassar’s abuse, long before it became public,” she said.
“We have called for a fully independent, factual investigation for years now, because these women who sit before you now know firsthand these organizations and their public statements are not to be trusted.”
Nassar has been found guilty in three separate cases, with one of the prison sentences running up to 175 years. Prosecutors have estimated he sexually assaulted hundreds of women and girls.
