On 15 September 2021 the Senate Judiciary Committee heard four gymnasts, the Justice Department's Inspector General and the Director of the FBI, at a hearing it called Dereliction of Duty. This film is that hearing and the two reports behind it.
responsible for athlete safety. I was named as gymnast two in the office of Inspector General's report and previously identified as athlete A by USA Gymnastics. I want everyone to know that this did not happen to gymnast two or to athlete A. It happened to me, Maggie Nichols.
I first started gymnastics when I was three and He was the doctor. National team physician for USA Gymnastics. A physician at Michigan State. He treated athletes at a club gym and at a high school.
Parents drove their daughters to him. In April twenty twenty-four, the Department of Justice put it in a single sentence of its own. Over the course of nearly two decades, and ending in twenty sixteen when he was arrested by the State of Michigan, Nassar sexually abused hundreds of victims under the guise of performing medical treatments. he abused young athletes under the guise of medical treatment.
Nassar used his trusted position to take advantage of his patients. He used the competitive nature of sports to hide in plain sight. By the time Nassar was convicted and sentenced in federal and Michigan state court, over 150 survivors had come forward to recount the impact of these horrific crimes. Today we believe Nassar abused more than 300 athletes before he was brought to justice.
As the details of Nassar's crimes emerged, there's been a consistent theme of neglect and inaction by those who are responsible for protecting the athletes. The report was published in July twenty twenty-one. Two months later the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing and called it Dereliction of Duty. Four witnesses were seated at the first table.
In September twenty twenty-one, four of them sat down in a Senate hearing room and said what it had meant.
Thank you for the opportunity to share my story with this committee and for bringing light to the crisis of abuse in amateur sports. Your commitment to ensuring the safety of gymnasts and all amateur athletes is appreciated, important, and necessary to ensure nothing like this ever happens again. Please bear with me. To be perfectly honest, I can imagine no place that I would be less comfortable right now than sitting here in front of you, sharing these comments.
My name is Simone Biles, and I am a gymnast who has trained at the levels of the sport. As an elite gymnast, I have had the honor to represent the United States of America in multiple international competitions, including world championships and the Olympic games. Over the course of my gymnastics career, I have won 25 World Championship medals and seven Olympic medals for Team USA. That record means so much to me, and I am proud of my representation of this nation through gymnastics.
I am also a survivor of sexual abuse, and I believe without a doubt that the circumstances that led to my abuse and allowed it to continue are directly the result of the fact that the organizations created by Congress to oversee and protect me as an athlete, USA Gymnastics, and the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee failed to do their jobs. Nelson Mandela once said, there can be no keener revelation of a society's soul than the way in which it treats its children. It is the power of that statement that compels and empowers me to be here in front of you today. I don't want another young gymnast, Olympic athlete, or any individual to experience the horror that I and hundreds of others have endured before, during, and continuing to this day in the wake of the Larry Nassar abuse.
To be clear, I blame Larry Nassar and I also blame an entire system that enabled and perpetrated his abuse. USA Gymnastics and the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee knew that I was abused by their official team doctor long before I was ever made aware of their knowledge. In May of 2015, Rhonda Fayhan, the former head of USA Gymnastics women's program, was told by my friend and teammate Maggie Nichols that she suspected I too was a victim. I didn't understand the magnitude of what all was happening until the Indianapolis Star published its article in the fall of 2016 entitled Former USA Gymnastics Doctor Accused of Abuse.
Yet while I was a member of the 2016 US Olympic team, neither USAG, USOPC, nor the FBI ever contacted me or my parents. While others had been informed and investigations were ongoing, I had been left to wonder why I was told until after the Rio games. This is the largest case of sexual abuse in the history of American sport. And although there has been a fully independent investigation of the FBI's handling of the case, neither USAG nor USOPC have ever been made the subject of the same level of scrutiny.
These are the entities entrusted with the protection of our sport and our athletes. And yet it feels like questions of responsibility and organizational failures remain unanswered. As you pursue the answers to those questions, I ask that your work be guided by the same question that Rachel Denhollander and many others have asked, how much is a little girl worth? I sit before you today to raise my voice so that no little girl must endure what I, the athletes at this table, and the countless others who needlessly suffered under Nassar's guise of medical treatment, which we continue to endure today.
We suffered and continue to suffer because no one at FBI, USAG, or the USOPC did what was necessary to protect us. We have been failed and we deserve answers. Nassar is where he belongs, but those who enabled him deserve to be held accountable. If they are not, I am convinced that this will continue to happen to others across Olympic sports.
In reviewing the OIG's report, it truly feels like the FBI turned a blind eye to us and went out of its way to help protect USAG and USOPC. A message needs to be sent. If you allow a predator to harm children, the consequences will be swift and severe. Enough is enough.
I will close with one final thought. The scars of this horrific abuse continue to live with all of us. As the lone competitor in the recent Tokyo games, who was a survivor of this horror, I can ensure you that the impacts of this man's abuse are not ever over or forgotten. The announcement in the spring of 2020 that the Tokyo Games were to be postponed for a year meant that I would be going to the gym, to training, to therapy, living daily among the reminders of this story for another 365 days.
As I have stated in the past, one that helped me push each and every day was the goal of not allowing this crisis to be ignored. I worked incredibly hard to make sure that my presence could maintain a connection between the failures and the competition at Tokyo 2020. That has proven to be exceptionally difficult burden for me to carry, particularly when required to travel to Tokyo without the support of any of my family. I am a strong individual and I will persevere, but I never should have been left alone to suffer the abuse of Larry Nassar and the only reason I did was because of the failures that lie at the heart of the abuse that you are now asked to investigate.
Again I appreciate the opportunity to share my thoughts with this committee today. I want to sincerely thank each of you for joining the survivors of this abuse to do what we all can to prevent anything like this from ever happening again. Thank you. microphone.
Are we on? All right. Good morning. Thank you, Chairman Durbin, Ranking Member Grassley, and members of the Judiciary Committee for inviting me to speak today.
As most of you are probably aware, I was molested by the U.S. Gymnastics National Team and Olympic team doctor Larry Nassar. In actuality, he turned out to be more of a pedophile than he was a doctor. What I'm trying to bring to your attention today is something incredibly disturbing and illegal.
After telling my entire story of abuse to the FBI in the summer of 2015, not only did the FBI not report my abuse, but when they eventually documented my report 17 months later, they made entirely false claims about what I said. After reading the Office of Inspector General's OIG report I was shocked and deeply disappointed at this narrative they chose to fabricate. They chose to lie about what I said and protect a serial child molester rather than protect not only me but countless others. My story is one in which special agent in charge Jay Abbott and his subordinates did not want you to hear and it's time that I tell you.
In the summer of 2015 like I said I was scheduled to speak to the FBI about my abuse with Larry Nassar over the phone. I was too sick to go meet with anyone in person, and talking about this abuse would give me PTSD for days. But I chose to speak about it, to try and make a difference and protect others. I remember sitting on my bedroom floor for nearly three hours as I told them what happened to me.
I hadn't even told my own mother about these facts, but I thought, as uncomfortable and as hard as it was to tell my story I was going to make a difference and hopefully protecting others from the same abuse. I answered all of their questions honestly and clearly and I disclosed all of my molestations I had endured by Nassar to them in extreme detail. They told me to start from the beginning. I told them about the sport of gymnastics, how you make the national team, and how I came to meet Larry Nassar when I was 13 at a Texas camp.
I told him that the first thing Larry Nassar ever said to me was to change into shorts with no underwear because that would make it easier for him to work on me, and within minutes he had his fingers in my vagina. The FBI then immediately asked, did he insert his fingers into your rectum? I said no, he never did. They asked if he gloves.
I said no he never did. They asked if this treatment ever helped me. I said no it never did. This treatment was a hundred percent abuse and never gave me any relief.
I then told the FBI about Tokyo the day he gave me a sleeping pill for the plane ride to then work on me later that night. That evening I was naked completely alone with him on top of me molesting me for hours. I told them I thought I was going to die that night because there was no way that he would let me go, but he did. I told them I walked the halls of Tokyo Hotel at 2 a.m.
at only 15 years old. I began crying at the memory over the phone and there was just dead silence. I was so shocked at the agent's silence and disregard for my trauma. After that minute of silence, he asked, is that all?
Those words in itself was one of the worst moments of this entire process for me. have my abuse be minimized and disregarded by the people who were supposed to protect me just to feel like my abuse was not enough. But the truth is my abuse was enough and they wanted to cover it up. USA Gymnastics in concert with the FBI and the Olympic Committee were working together to conceal that Larry Nassar was a predator.
I then proceeded to tell them about London and how he'd signed me up last on sheet so he could molest me for hours twice a day. I told them how he molested me right before I won my team gold medal, how he gave me presents, bought me caramel macchiatos and bread when I was hungry. I even sent them screenshots of Nassar's last text to me, which was, McKayla, I love how you see the world with rose-colored glasses. I hope you continue to do so.
This was very clear cookie-cutter pedophilia and abuse, and this is important because I told the FBI all of this and they chose to falsify my report and to not only minimize my abuse but silence me yet again. I thought given the severity of this situation they would act quickly for the sake of protecting other girls but instead it took them 14 months to report anything when Larry Nassar in my opinion should have been in jail that day. The FBI, USOC and USAG sat idly by as dozens of girls and women continued to be molested by Larry Nassar. According to the OIG report, about 14 months after I disclosed my abuse to the FBI, nearly a year and a half later, the FBI agent who interviewed me in 2015 decided to write down my statement, a statement that the OIG report determined to be materially false.
Let's be honest. By not taking immediate action from my report, they allowed a child molester to go free for more than a year. And this inaction directly allowed Nassar's abuse to continue. What is the point of reporting abuse if our own FBI agents are going to take it upon themselves to bury that report in a abuse and did nothing.
If they're not going to protect me, I want to know who are they trying to protect? What's even more upsetting to me is that we now we know that these FBI agents have committed an obvious crime. They falsified my statement and that is illegal in itself. Yet no recourse has been taken against them.
The Department of Justice refused to prosecute these individuals. Why? Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco couldn't even bring herself to be here today and it is the Department of Justice's job to hold them accountable. I am tired of waiting for people to do the right thing because my abuse was enough and we deserve justice.
These individuals clearly violated policies and were negligent in executing their duties and in doing so more girls were abused by Larry Nassar for over a year. To not indict these agents is a disservice to me and my teammates. It is a disservice to the system which was built to protect all of us from abuse. It was a disservice to every victim who suffered needlessly at the hands of Larry Nassar after I spoke up.
Why are public servants whose job is to protect getting away with this? This is not justice. Enough is enough. Today, I ask you all to hear my voice.
I ask you, please, do all that is in your power to ensure that these individuals are held responsible and accountable for ignoring my initial report, for lying about my initial report, and for covering up for a child molester. In closing, I would like to express my deep gratitude to the United States Senate, a very powerful institution that, from the very beginning, has fought for us rather than against us. Thank you, Ms. Maroney.
Ms. Nichols. Chair Durbin, Ranking Member Grassley, and distinguished members of the Judiciary Committee, thank you for inviting me to speak to you today and I want to personally thank you for your commitments to prioritizing athlete safety and holding accountable those responsible for athlete safety. I was named as gymnast two in the office of Inspector General's report and previously identified as athlete A by USA Gymnastics.
I want everyone to know that this did not happen to gymnast two or to athlete A. It happened to me, Maggie Nichols. I first started gymnastics when I was three and since I was a child I always had a dream of competing for my country in the world championships and Olympic games. I was an elite level gymnast by the age of 13 and by the time I was 14 I made the national team.
I traveled internationally for four years attending competitions and in 2015 at the world championships representing our country where I won a gold medal. My Olympic dreams ended in the summer of 2015 when my coach and I reported Larry Nassar's abuse USAG leadership. I went on to compete at the University of Oklahoma where I was named first team All-American in the all-round in all four events and was an eight-time national champion. I reported my abuse to USA Gymnastics over six years ago and still my family and I received few answers and have even more questions about how this was allowed to occur and why dozens of other little girls and women at Michigan State had to be abused after I reported.
In sacrificing my childhood for the chance to compete for the United States, I am haunted by the fact that even after I reported my abuse, so many women and girls had to suffer at the hands of Larry Nassar. USA Gymnastics and the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee and the FBI have all betrayed me and those who were abused by Larry Nassar after I reported. The cover-up of my abuse and the FBI's failure to interview me for more than a year after my complaint are well documented in the OIG report. After I reported my abuse to USA Gymnastics, my family and I were told by their former president Steve Penny to keep quiet and not say anything that could hurt the FBI investigation.
We now know there was no real FBI investigation occurring. While On my complaints with the FBI, Larry Nassar continued to abuse women and girls. During this time, the FBI issued no search warrants and made no arrests. From the day I reported my molestation by Nassar, I was treated differently by USAG.
Not only did the FBI fail to conduct a thorough investigation, but they also knew that USAG and the USOPC created a false narrative where Larry Nassar was allowed to retire. with his reputation intact and returned to Michigan State University, thus allowing dozens of little girls to be molested. As the Inspector General's report details, during this time period FBI agents did not properly document evidence, failed to report proper authorities, and the special agent in charge was seeking to become the new Director of Security for the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee, a job opportunity raised by Steve Penny. Afterwards, FBI agents in charge of the investigation lied to OIG investigators about what had happened.
This conduct by these FBI agents, including the special agent in charge, who are held in high regard and expected to protect the public, is unacceptable, disgusting, and shameful. This committee produced a report in 2019 titled, The Courage of Survivors, a Call to Action. It found that the U.S. Olympic Committee and USAG and the national governing body designated by USOC and administer amateur gymnastics failed to adequately respond to credible allegations against Nassar.
Similarly, the OIG report found that senior FBI officials lied to the inspector general, engaged in serious conflicts of interest, and tried to cover up one of the biggest child sexual abuse scandals in the history of amateur sports. Both reports uncovered serious and possibly criminal misconduct by those at the highest level of the Olympic Committee, our sport, and the FBI. Despite these findings of serious and criminal misconduct throughout the FBI, USAG, and USOPC, no accountability has occurred. An important question remains, perhaps the most important question, why?
Why would the FBI agents lie to OIG investigators? Why would the FBI not properly document evidence that was received? Why would the FBI agent be interested in the USAG presidency? These questions remain unanswered and the survivors of Larry Nassar have a right to know why their well-being was placed in the jeopardy by these individuals who chose not to do their jobs.
To date, no one from the FBI, the U.S. OPC, or USAG has faced federal charges other than Larry Nassar. For many hundreds of survivors of Larry Nassar, this hearing is one of our last opportunities to get justice. We ask that you do what is in your power to ensure those that engaged in wrongdoing are held accountable under the law.
I want to begin by thanking the Judiciary Committee including Chairman Durbin and Ranking Member Grassley for their commitment to seeking the truth for the hundreds if not thousands who were systematically abused by Larry Nassar and for this committee's diligence to demand accountability regarding federal law enforcement's misconduct. I also want to express my gratitude to the other brave survivors here today, my friends and my teammates, for sharing their stories and continuing to press for justice and reform. Over the past few years, it has become painfully clear how a survivor's healing is affected by the handling of their abuse, and it disgusts me that we are still fighting for the most basic answers and accountability over six years later. In 2015, it was known that at least six national team athletes had been abused by Nassar.
There was even one of the athletes that was abused on film. Given our abuser's unfettered access to children, stopping him should have been a priority. Instead, the following occurred. The FBI failed to interview pertinent parties in a timely manner.
It took over 14 months for the FBI to contact me, despite my many requests to be interviewed by them. The records established that Steve Penny, FBI agent Jay Abbott, and their subordinates worked to conceal Nassar's crimes. Steve Penny arranged with the FBI to conduct my interview at the Olympic Training Center, where I was under the control and observation of USA Gymnastics and the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee. The day of my interview Steve Penny flew to the Olympic Training Center and he made sure I was aware he was there.
I felt pressured by the FBI to consent to Nassar's plea deal. The agent diminished the significance of my abuse and made me feel my criminal case wasn't worth pursuing. Special agent in charge of investigating Nassar met Steve Penny for beers to discuss job opportunities in the Olympic movement. Another FBI agent worked with Steve Penny to determine jurisdiction without interviewing the survivors.
I've watched multiple high-ranking officials at USAG, USOPC, and FBI resign or retire without explanation of how they may have contributed to the problem, some of whom were publicly thanked for their service and rewarded with severance or bonus money. My reports of abuse were not only buried by USAG, USOPC, but they were also mishandled by federal law enforcement officers who failed to follow their most basic duties. The FBI and others within both USAG and USOPC knew that Nassar molested children and did nothing to restrict his access. Steve Penny and any USAG employee could have walked a few steps to file a report with the Indiana Child Protective Services since they shared the same building.
Instead, they quietly allowed Nassar to slip out the side door, knowingly allowing him to continue his work at MSU, Sparrow hospital, a USAG club, and even run for school board. Nassar found more than 100 new victims to molest. It was like serving innocent children up to a pedophile on a silver platter. Why did none of these organizations warn anyone?
USAG and USOPC have a long history of enabling abuse turning a blind eye. Both organizations knew of Nassar's abuse long before it became public. Although you wouldn't know that by their by reading their press releases, which would have you and their corporate sponsors believe that athlete safety comes first. We have called for a fully independent factual investigation for years now because I and these women who sit before you know firsthand these organizations and their public statements are not to be trusted.
They claim they want accountability but then seek to restrict which staff can be interviewed, which documents can be examined, and claim attorney-client privilege over and over again. The so-called investigations these organizations orchestrated were not designed to provide the answers we so critically need. Why are we left to guess why USAG and USOPC deliberately ignored reported abuse? Was it to protect the value of the sponsorships, the LA-28 bid, their own jobs, to avoid criminal liability?
Perhaps. But why must we speculate when the facts are obtainable and the stakes are so high. Why would duly sworn federal law enforcement officers ignore reports of abuse by a doctor across state lines and country borders for a future job opportunity? Or were there additional incentives and pressures?
Why must we speculate when the facts are obtainable and the stakes are so high? Just as it is naive to assume the problem only rests with Nassar, it is unrealistic to think we can grasp the full extent of culpability without understanding how and why USAG and USOPC chose to ignore abuse for decades and why the interplay among these three organizations led the FBI to willingly disregard our reports of abuse. Without knowing who knew what when, we cannot identify all enablers or determine whether they are still in positions of power. We just can't fix a problem we don't understand.
And we can't understand the problem unless and until we have all of the facts. If we don't do all we can And to get these facts, the problems we are here to address will persist, and we are deluding ourselves if we think other children can be spared the institutionalized tolerance and normalization of abuse that I and so many others had to endure. I thank you for your time, your commitment, and your genuine concern for those survivors who relied on the FBI to do the right thing. I welcome any questions and comments, and I will answer them to the best of my ability.
I would like to say that I personally don't think that people realize how much experiencing a type of abuse is not something that one just suffers in the moment. It carries on with them sometimes for the rest of their lives. For example, being here today is taking everything I have. My main concern is I hope I have the energy even to just walk out of here.
I don't think people realize how much it affects us, how much the PTSD, how much the trauma impacts us, and for every survivor. It's different. Healing looks different for every survivor. The aftermath looks very different.
For me, just to paint a picture, I used to train some days seven hours a day when I was training for the Olympics and processing my abuse affected me so much and it is still something I struggle with that I can remember when I first shared my story publicly for a very very long time. I didn't even have the energy to stand up in the shower. I would have to sit on floor and wash my hair because standing up was too exhausting for me. I couldn't even go for a 10-minute walk outside and this is someone I've competed in two Olympic Games and there are times where I feel like I forget what I'm saying, I feel like my mind isn't working, I feel like I have no energy at all, I'm 27 year old grandfather has more energy than I do and I've often wondered is this am I ever gonna feel better and it has affected my health I in the last couple of years I've had to be taken in an ambulance because I pass out and I'm I'm so sick from just the trauma and it might not even be after a hearing like this it just hits me out of the blue and so I think it's important for people to understand how much, even if we're not crying, how much we are all struggling and how much survivors are suffering because people often say, well, why did you just come forward now?
Because it's terrifying to come forward, the fear of not being believed, but also because it affects us so much. And sometimes it's impossible just to say the words out loud. And so I just want people to know and I'm sure for a lot of us, especially myself, like this might take me months to recover. and so I just wanted to make that clear because I think it's important for people to start recognizing you may never know Almost three years earlier, on the twenty-eighth of July twenty fifteen, USA Gymnastics had taken the allegations to the FBI.
The meeting was in Indianapolis. The organisation's president was there. So was the Special Agent in Charge of the field office, his deputy, and a supervisory special agent. What happened after that meeting is not a matter of anyone's account.
The Department of Justice's own Inspector General spent years establishing it, and published a hundred and nineteen pages in July twenty twenty-one. The Inspector General and the Director of the FBI sat at the second table, after them.
Let me briefly just summarize the results of our investigation. In July 2015, USA Gymnastics reported the sexual assault allegations against Nassar to the FBI's Indianapolis field office. USA Gymnastics officials described graphic information that had been provided by Ms. Maroney, Ms.
Nichols, and Ms. Raisman and informed the FBI that all three athletes were available to be interviewed. Thirty-five days passed before anyone at the FBI discussed the allegations with a prosecutor. On the second of September, two agents interviewed one gymnast by telephone.
It was the only interview the Indianapolis field office ever conducted.
However, it wasn't until six weeks later, on September 2nd, that the Indianapolis office interviewed Ms. Maroney by telephone, as you heard, and neither Ms. Nichols nor Ms. Raisman were ever interviewed by that office.
Moreover, the Indianapolis office did not formally document its interview of Ms. Maroney at the time or its July meeting with USA Gymnastics. The office also didn't formally open an investigation or an assessment of the matter. Immediately following that September 2nd interview, the Indianapolis office and local federal prosecutors concluded there was no venue in Indianapolis for the federal investigation.
Both offices also had serious questions as to whether there was federal criminal jurisdiction as opposed to state or local jurisdiction. Yet the Indianapolis field office didn't advise state or local authorities about the allegations and didn't take any actions to mitigate the risks to gymnasts that Nassar was continuing to treat. Further, that office failed to transfer the case to the FBI office that actually might have had venue despite informing USA Gymnastics that it had actually done so. The prosecutor told them to send the case to Michigan, to the resident agency in Lansing.
Lansing was never told. Neither were the state police. Neither were any local police. The report is specific about why that mattered: the agents themselves doubted there was federal jurisdiction, and did it anyway.
Two days later the Special Agent in Charge emailed the president of USA Gymnastics to say the interviews were complete and the results had gone to Michigan. Nothing had gone to Michigan. Nassar went on seeing patients. Eight months of nothing followed.
In May twenty sixteen USA Gymnastics gave the same allegations to the Los Angeles field office, which opened an investigation, interviewed victims - and also told no state or local police. Nassar went on seeing patients. After eight months of FBI inactivity in May 2016, USA Gymnastics officials contacted the FBI's Los Angeles field office to report the same allegations that it provided to the Indianapolis office. Following this meeting, the LA office opened a federal investigation and undertook numerous investigative steps.
But critically, it didn't contact state or local authorities, and it didn't take action to mitigate the ongoing threat presented by Nassar. It wasn't until August 2016 when Michigan State University Police, that police department, received a separate sexual assault complaint from another gymnast. And in September 2016, the next month, the MSU Police Department executed a court authorized search of Nassar's residence. Among other things, they seized devices containing over 30,000 images of child pornography.
It ended in August twenty sixteen, and it did not end because of the FBI. A former gymnast walked into the Michigan State University police department. A newspaper published. Dozens more women came forward to the university police, and on the twentieth of September the university police searched his house.
The FBI's Lansing office learned of the allegations on the fifth of October twenty sixteen, from the university police. Fourteen months and one week after the meeting in Indianapolis. According to civil court documents, approximately 70 or more young athletes were allegedly sexually abused by Nassar under the guise of medical treatment between July 2015 when the FBI first received these allegations until September 2016. The Inspector General wrote one sentence about that interval, and attributed it, carefully, to civil court documents.
It is on screen exactly as it was published, and the qualifier that follows it is on screen too: for many of those athletes the abuse had begun before the FBI was ever told, and continued. For others it began after. Go back to the telephone call. The second of September, twenty fifteen.
The FBI is required to write up an interview like that in a report called an FD-three-oh-two. It is the Bureau's record of what a witness said. That report was written on the second of February, twenty seventeen. Seventeen months later.
From memory and one page of notes. The agent did not consult the colleague who had been on the call with him, and did not look at her notes.
We further found when the FBI's handling of the Nassar matter came under scrutiny in 2017 and 2018, Indianapolis officials provided inaccurate information to make it appear that they had actually been diligent in their follow-up efforts and did so in part by blaming others. In addition, it resulted in the Indianapolis Supervisory Special Agent drafting a summary of his telephonic interview of Ms. Maroney from 2015. In 2018, that summary included statements, as you heard from Ms.
Maroney, that didn't accurately reflect what she had told them and could have actually jeopardized the criminal investigations by including false information that could have bolstered Nassar's defense. Further, we concluded that that agent made false testimony statements to the OIG in two interviews that we conducted. She had told them about a night in a hotel room in Tokyo, when she was a child. She told the Inspector General she raised it specifically because it was, in her words, the scariest night of her life.
The agent had heard her. His own notes from the call carry a hotel room, Tokyo, an approximate date, and the phrase "more intense". The report he filed seventeen months later describes treatments. It also contains statements she told the Inspector General she never made - statements that are not in his notes, that his colleague did not remember, and that contradict what she told the FBI in Los Angeles a year later.
He also told the Inspector General that she had described gifts, and food snuck to her. He agreed that this was evidence of grooming. It is not in the report either. the criminal prosecution.
And here, I think there are really fundamental issues of fairness and law enforcement. Mr. Horowitz, your report is so powerful because it lays out the lies. And, for someone who has been a federal prosecutor, to put into a 302 a false statement by a potential witness is so blood curdling that I can well understand your criminal referral and in fact as you say, the false statement inserted by that FBI agent could have been used in a false defense by Larry Nassar.
Exactly right. As you heard from Ms. Maroney, she laid out the falsity in her testimony. As you noted, the key issue that was challenging loosely the Indianapolis office which really wasn't doing much, but the L.A.
office was Nassar's claim defense that he was doing a medical procedure. In October twenty fifteen, while the matter was still sitting at the FBI, the Special Agent in Charge met the president of USA Gymnastics at a bar. The president suggested a job: chief security officer for the United States Olympic Committee, when the current one retired.
We also learned during our investigation that in the fall of 2015, the FBI in Indianapolis special agent in charge, Jay Abbott, met with USA Gymnastics President Steve Penny at a bar and discussed the potential job opportunity with the U.S. Olympic Committee. Thereafter, Abbott engaged with Penny about both his interest in the U.S. Olympic Committee job and the Nassar investigation, while at the same time participating in Nassar investigation discussions at the FBI.
Abbott applied for the U.S. Olympic Committee position in 2017 but wasn't selected. We determined that Abbott's actions violated the FBI's clear conflicts of interest policy. We also found that Abbott made false statements to the OIG and my agents in two interviews that we conducted.
On the twelfth of September twenty sixteen, the newspaper published. USA Gymnastics issued a statement saying that immediately after learning of athlete concerns it had notified law enforcement. That same day its president emailed the article to the Special Agent in Charge, who replied: Thanks Steve. Hang in there.
You will be all right. They went on talking. About the job, and about the investigation, sometimes in the same email. In February twenty seventeen he applied for the position.
He was not hired. When the Inspector General asked him about it, he denied applying. He denied it twice. And he told the investigators that applying would have been a conflict of interest.
When reporters began asking questions, the field office proposed a public statement implying the FBI had acted on the July twenty fifteen meeting. Headquarters began a document called the Nassar White Paper. The Inspector General found that it left out the Bureau's failure to interview the gymnasts, and that a later version contained claims the evidence did not support. In February twenty eighteen, retired, he told a New York Times reporter there had been no delay.
member Grassley, members of the committee, on behalf of the entire FBI, I want to begin by saying to the brave women who testified here this morning, Ms. Biles, Ms. Maroney, Ms. Nichols, and Ms.
Raisman, and I gather there were some others here today who were among the many who Nassar hurt, I'm deeply and profoundly sorry to each and every one of you. I'm sorry for what you and your families have been through. I'm sorry that so many different people let you down over and over again. And I'm especially sorry that there were people at the FBI who had their own chance to stop this monster back in 2015 and failed.
And that is inexcusable. It never should have happened. And we're doing everything in our power to make sure it never happens again. Now, before I became FBI Director, I was generally General Horowitz, did any of the FBI employees or agents involved in this case deliberately misrepresent any facts to you in your investigation?
They did. We found both that the person who wrote the report that Ms. Maroney testified about, falsely testified to us about what he did in connection with that report, as well as other matters that we asked him about, and Special Agent in Charge Abbott made false statements to us about the steps he took in 2015 when these allegations came in, but also about his effort, job-seeking efforts with the U.S. Olympic Committee.
Did these deliberate misrepresentations reach the level of criminal violation? Well we found that they violated criminal law sufficiently that what we do at that point is make the referral to prosecutors to assess them because that's who needs to make the decision whether or not there will be charges brought. Director Wray, what happened next? Well as Inspector General Horowitz said, those were referred to the prosecutors over at the As I understand it from Inspector General Horowitz's report, the prosecutors at the Justice Department on two separate occasions, both in 2020 and then again in 2021, declined to prosecute.
But I really would defer to the Justice Department for those. Are you personally aware, professionally aware of any facts or circumstances that would lead to that decision? I am not. Well it is outrageous and I am sorry because I have a great faith in this Attorney General and his Department of Justice but when we asked them to bring someone in to explain this today they refused and so they wouldn't attend and I understand that it's procedure in the department not to go into the basis for deciding not to pursue prosecution, but this is on its face obvious that these agents not only were derelict in their duty when it came to these young women, but also did their best to cover up what had happened, and that is inexcusable from where I am standing.
a report. Let me just come right to the reason we're here today. 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 afterward. When FBI agents made material false statements and deceptive omissions referred by the Inspector General for criminal prosecution, those referrals were declined without explanation, without Without any public explanation at all, 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 and accountability.
whatever information we can certainly as I've already testified here today the special agent the supervisory special agent who features so prominently in Inspector General Horowitz's report I can confirm has been terminated as to the former special agent in charge, he retired before this review commenced, before we learned the extent of his misconduct, much to my frustration. As to the decision whether or not to prosecute either individual, I would respectfully refer over to the Justice Department, which I think is where, Senator Grassley, you said your letter was appropriately directed. I did want to clarify one thing I answered in response to one of your earlier questions which is that the supervisory special agent that we fired, that was two weeks ago, just for the record. He was on the hunt for employment.
He was in contact with Stephen Penny and others, and he was lying to investigators. There's no statute of limitations here that would preclude a prosecution or, in your case, an investigation for a conspiracy, correct? Five years. Well, again, I'm not aware of any statute of limitations problem here, but I would defer to prosecutors.
I would ask you, I call on you to open an investigation here for a potential false statement, conspiracy. There are other potential violations. There's no preclusion based on statute of limitations. I recognize that you don't have the power to prosecute, but you do to investigate.
No one was charged. The Department declined prosecution of both agents in September twenty twenty, ten months before the report came out, and in May twenty twenty-two, after another review, it said it was adhering to that decision - while stating, in the same notice, that this did not reflect a view that the investigation had been handled as it should have been. In April twenty twenty-four the United States settled a hundred and thirty-nine claims arising from the FBI's handling of the case, for a hundred and thirty-eight point seven million dollars. Four months after that, the Inspector General published again.
Not about Nassar. About what the FBI does now with reports of children being sexually abused. Three hundred and twenty-seven incidents were examined. In forty-seven per cent of them there was no evidence that anyone had told local law enforcement.
In fifty per cent, no evidence that anyone had told social services. Where a report was made at all, it was made within the required twenty-four hours in forty-three per cent of cases, and fully written up in seventeen. Forty-two of those incidents were handed to FBI headquarters during the audit itself, because the auditors believed they needed immediate attention. In one of them, the Bureau had not passed the case to the police force that had jurisdiction.
During that period, the report says, the subject allegedly victimised at least one additional minor, for approximately fifteen months. He was indicted after the auditors raised it. The same report records that mandatory reports by FBI employees rose substantially after the Bureau changed its policy in September twenty twenty-one - the month the four of them testified.
I have one minute in question and my question basically to the panel, anyone who cares to respond. What would you say to other young athletes who may be suffering in silence or wrestling with the decision about whether to speak out? Ms. Raisman?
The first thing that I would want to say to anybody that's watching this that's suffering in silence or has been through something really traumatic is that I support them, I believe them, and just be patient with yourself, be kind to know that I'm struggling too. I'm still navigating how to heal from this and healing is a roller coaster. There are some days I feel better, some days I feel like I'm taking a bunch of steps backwards and that's okay. We're all human, we're all doing the best that we can, but I would encourage whoever is out there that's listening to tell someone whenever they feel comfortable and it's so important to have a good support system and a community around you and if If you're someone out there that doesn't have a good support system, that's okay.
Sometimes it can take some time to find a good support system. So I encourage you to not give up until you find that support that you deserve. And just remember that I believe you, I support you, you are not alone, and I encourage you to ask for help. Anyone else on the panel?
Yeah, I would just want to say that they need to know that their abuse is enough. I think for so long all of us questioned, just because somebody else wasn't fully validating us, that we doubted what happened to us, and that is always going to make the healing process take longer. I think the second that I gave that to myself is when I really began to heal and when I really began to get my voice back, and that took a long time. And I think to reach out to other survivors and to speak to them and hear their stories is what continues to help me heal, and hearing all these girls speak is really what continues to make me want to be here today and help others.
And you are.
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