The Justice Department announced Tuesday that it has reached a settlement with more than 100 victims abused by former USA Gymnastics team doctor Larry Nassar and is set to pay the women $138.7 million over the FBI’s fumbled investigation. The victims, who were abused by Nassar for decades under the guise of medical care, sued the FBI in 2022 for turning a blind eye to the women’s repeated allegations of sexual abuse. Combined with previous payments, the victims have now been awarded close to $1 billion in settlements for the horrific treatment they endured at the hands of a man who was hired to take care of them.
According to the Justice Department, the payment is the result of 139 now-settled administrative claims filed by victims, including former members of the USA Gymnastics team Aly Raisman, Simone Biles, McKayla Maroney, Samantha Roy, and Maggie Nichols. More than two years after senior FBI officials admitted that its agents had failed to take action when U.S. national team athletes first complained about Nassar back in 2015, per the New York Times, the women are finally seeing additional compensation for their trauma. Though Nassar was arrested by the State of Michigan in 2016 and is currently serving a 40- to 175-year sentence in Florida for sex crimes, the women continue to experience anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and suicidal ideation as a result of the ongoing abuse they suffered, the Times reported earlier this month.
“For decades, Lawrence Nassar abused his position, betraying the trust of those under his care and medical supervision while skirting accountability,” acting associate attorney general Benjamin C. Mizer said in a release. “These allegations should have been taken seriously from the outset. 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.”
Previously, the victims had been awarded $500 million in a victim-compensation fund from Michigan State University, which employed Nassar, in 2018. Later, in 2021, USA Gymnastics and the United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee reached a $380 million settlement.
“If the FBI had simply done its job,” Roy wrote in a statement in 2022, “Nassar would have stopped before he ever had the chance to abuse hundreds of girls, including me.”
“My fellow survivors and I were betrayed by every institution that was supposed to protect us — the U.S. Olympic Committee, USA Gymnastics, and now the Department of Justice,” Maroney added at the time. “It is clear that the only path to justice and healing is through the legal process.”
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Emily Leibert , 2024-04-23 20:37:20
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