The Justice Department will pay $138.7 million to Larry Nassar’s victims over FBI failures

The U.S. Department of Justice agreed to pay more than $100 million to 100 victims of former Team USA doctor Larry Nassar over the FBI’s failure in the investigation, it announced Tuesday.

The $138.7 million settlement was first reported last week by The Wall Street Journal.

The deal ends the latest legal claims against institutions involved in the Nassar investigations. It also brings the total settlement amount for all lawsuits against him to almost $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 will not undo the damage Nassar has caused, we hope they will give the victims of his crimes some of the crucial support they need to continue healing,” Acting Attorney General Benjamin Mizer said Tuesday in a statement. , via the Associated Press.

Nassar was sentenced to 175 years in prison after admitting to sexually abusing girls while serving as a team doctor for USA Gymnastics and Michigan State gymnastics. He was convicted in 2018, and 168 survivors gave detailed accounts of the abuse he committed during that hearing — including Olympic gold medalists Simone Biles, McKayla Maroney, Aly Raisman, Gabby Douglas, Madison Kocian and Jordyn Wieber. Nassar was also convicted of separate child pornography charges and sentenced to 60 years in prison. He also lost several appeals after his ruling. Nassar was stabbed multiple times last year in a maximum-security federal prison in Florida.

Biles, Raisman, Maroney and others are reportedly involved in the latest settlement.

Olympic gymnasts Aly Raisman, Simone Biles, McKayla Maroney and NCAA and world champion gymnast Maggie Nichols testified at a 2021 U.S. Senate hearing about the abuse experienced by former team doctor Larry Nassar. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

FBI Director Christopher Wray apologized to Nassar survivors during a 2021 Senate hearing for the agency’s failures during the investigation, which first began in 2015. Several Team USA gymnasts told agents inside the FBI field office in Indianapolis about the abuse they experienced in 2015, but officers there “did not undertake any investigative activity for five weeks,” among other failures.

A Justice Department report found that “despite the extremely serious nature of the allegations and the possibility that Nassar’s conduct could continue, senior officials at the FBI Indianapolis Field Office failed to act with the utmost seriousness and urgency to respond to Nassar’s allegations.” according to ESPN.

Nassar was not publicly accused of his crimes until November 2016. He continued to see patients for nearly fourteen months after gymnasts first went to the FBI.

“By not taking action on my report, the FBI has allowed a child molester to remain free for more than a year,” Maroney testified at a Senate hearing, according to ESPN. “They had legal evidence of child abuse and did nothing.”

By comparison, the settlement is comparable to what the U.S. government has paid to victims of mass shootings 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 2021 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida.

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