Justice Department to pay $138.7 million to victims of Larry Nassar over FBI’s failures
Once finalized, total settlements from Larry Nassar cases will have hit nearly $1 billion
The U.S. Justice Department agreed to pay more than $100 million to 100 victims of former Team USA doctor Larry Nassar over the FBI’s failures in the investigation, it announced on Tuesday.
The $138.7 million settlement was first reported by The Wall Street Journal last week.
The deal ends the last legal claims against institutions involved in the Nassar investigations. It also brings the total settlement amount for all of the legal cases against him to nearly $1 billion. The settlement follows a $380 million settlement with both USA Gymnastics and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee in 2021, and a $500 million settlement with Michigan State in 2018.
"While these settlements won't undo the harm Nassar inflicted, our hope is that they will help give the victims of his crimes some of the critical support they need to continue healing," acting associate Attorney General Benjamin Mizer said in a statement on Tuesday, via The Associated Press.
Nassar was sentenced to up to 175 years in prison after he admitted to sexually assaulting girls while serving as the team doctor for USA Gymnastics and Michigan State gymnastics. He was sentenced in 2018, and 168 survivors detailed accounts of the abuse he committed at that hearing — including Olympic gold medalists Simone Biles, McKayla Maroney, Aly Raisman, Gabby Douglas, Madison Kocian and Jordyn Wieber. Nassar was also convicted on separate child pornography charges, and sentenced to 60 years in prison. He lost several appeals after his ruling, too. Nassar was stabbed multiple times in a high-security federal prison in Florida last year.
Biles, Raisman, Maroney and others are reportedly involved in the latest settlement.
FBI Director Christopher Wray apologized to Nassar survivors at a Senate hearing in 2021 for the bureau's failures throughout the investigation, which first started in 2015. Several Team USA gymnasts told agents within the FBI’s Indianapolis field office about the abuse they were experiencing in 2015, but agents there “did not undertake any investigative activity” for five weeks, among other failures.
A report from the Justice Department found that "despite the extraordinarily serious nature of the allegations and the possibility that Nassar's conduct could be continuing, senior officials in the FBI Indianapolis Field Office failed to respond to the Nassar allegations with the utmost seriousness and urgency,” per ESPN.
Nassar was not publicly accused of his crimes until November 2016. He continued to see patients for nearly 14 months after gymnasts first went to the FBI.
“By not taking action from my report, [the FBI] allowed a child molester to go free for more than a year,” Maroney testified at a Senate hearing, per ESPN. “They had legal evidence of child abuse and did nothing.”
By comparison, the settlement is similar to what the U.S. government has paid out to mass shooting victims in recent years. According to the report, the Justice Department paid nearly $145 million in 2023 to victims of a mass shooting at a church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, and nearly $128 million to survivors of the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida in 2021.
