FBI continues to fail child sex abuse victims despite reforms after bungled Nassar investigation, watchdog finds

(CNN) — The FBI has continued to mishandle allegations of child sexual abuse in the years after the bureau’s notorious bungling of the investigation into disgraced USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar, according to an audit by the Justice Department’s inspector general released Thursday.

Because of those failures, allegations of sexual abuse against children were left unaddressed for months while minors continued to be victimized, the audit found.

In one particularly egregious example, the FBI did not follow up for more than a year on a tip about child abuse being committed by a registered sex offender. The bureau also failed to report the allegation to local law enforcement and the abuser’s probation officer.

While the FBI failed to act, the inspector general said, another child was abused for 15 months.

The FBI also did not document any steps taken by law enforcement to safeguard a 2-year-old who was being sexually abused while an investigation languished for more than two years, the audit says. The agent assigned to that case was juggling too many investigations, the inspector general said.

A senior FBI official defended the bureau in a call with reporters Thursday, saying that the “vast majority” of issues highlighted in the audit were “compliance issues,” meaning that “investigative steps were taken, notifications were made, but there was improper or missing documentation within the case file.”

The official added that “we don’t refute that there are instances where investigative steps should have been taken,” calling those failures “completely unacceptable.”

The audit followed up on issues that the department’s top watchdog identified as part of its scathing investigation into how the FBI investigated allegations against Nassar.

In the Nassar investigation, which was opened in 2018 and resulted in a final report in 2021, the inspector general found that senior officials in the FBI Indianapolis Field Office failed to respond to the Nassar allegations “with the utmost seriousness and urgency that they deserved and required.”

The watchdog also found the field office made several fundamental errors when they did respond to the allegations and failed to notify state or local authorities of the allegations or to take steps to mitigate the continued threat that Nassar posed.

Since then, the FBI has implemented several changes around how they report, investigate, and document allegations of child sexual abuse, the inspector general said.

Despite those changes, the inspector general found that FBI employees often did not properly report allegations of child abuse to local law enforcement or did not report the suspected ongoing abuse to local authorities within 24 hours, as is required by FBI policy.

In nearly half of the 327 cases reviewed for the audit, the inspector general said there wasn’t evidence that FBI employees complied with the requirement to report allegations to local law enforcement. Only 17% were reported with all of the required documentation.

At a September 2021 congressional hearing on the Nassar investigation, FBI Director Christopher Wray had vowed the bureau wouldn’t let the failures happen again.

“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,” Wray told lawmakers at the time.

“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,” he said. “It never should have happened, and we’re doing everything in our power to make sure it never happens again.”

The FBI said in a statement Thursday that “ensuring the safety and security of children is not just a priority for the FBI; it is a solemn duty that we are committed to fulfilling with the highest standards,” and that the bureau is “committed to maintaining the public’s trust by implementing the necessary improvements” to ensure that children are protected.

The Justice Department reached a $138.7 million settlement earlier this year with more than 100 of Nasar’s victims over the FBI’s initial failures in investigating the sexual assault case.

He was sentenced in state court to up to 175 years in prison for sexually abusing young athletes under the guise of medical treatment over the course of 20 years.