JUDY WOODRUFF: The Senate Judiciary Committee today heard damning testimony
from four elite U.S. gymnasts about the FBI's mishandling of sexual abuse allegations
against former USA Gymnastics coach doctor Larry Nassar.
Each criticized the agency and pressed lawmakers
to demand further accountability for those who enabled Nassar.
Amna Nawaz reports.
MCKAYLA MARONEY, Nassar Accuser: What is the point of reporting
abuse if our own FBI agents take it upon themselves to bury that report in a drawer?
AMNA NAWAZ: Today, on Capitol Hill, four of America's top gymnasts recounted their abuse
by former team USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar and the FBI's failure to investigate.
MCKAYLA MARONEY: This was 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.
MAGGIE NICHOLS, NASSAR Accuser: USA Gymnastics and the USA Olympic and Paralympic Committee
and the FBI have all betrayed me and all those who were abused after I reported.
ALY RAISMAN, Nassar Accuser: The FBI made me feel like my abuse
didn't count, and it wasn't a big deal. And I remember sitting there with the FBI agent, and him
trying to convince me that it wasn't that bad.
And it's taken me years of therapy to realize that my abuse was bad, that it does matter.
SIMONE BILES, Nassar Accuser: To be clear, I blame Larry Nassar. And I also blame
an entire system that enabled and perpetrated his abuse.
AMNA NAWAZ: Simone Biles, the lone Nassar assault survivor on the 2020 Tokyo Olympic squad,
said pushing for accountability is part of why she kept competing.
SIMONE BILES: 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.
One thing that helped me push each and every day was the goal of not allowing
this crisis to be ignored. That has proven to be an exceptionally difficult burden for me to carry.
AMNA NAWAZ: More than 250 women and girls accused Larry Nassar of sexual abuse.
He was sentenced to 60 years in federal prison in 2017.
Should he outlive that, Nassar faces up to 175 years in Michigan state prison.
Lawmakers berated the FBI's botched probe today, including failing to
properly investigate allegations of abuse first brought to their attention in 2015.
SEN. RICHARD BLUMENTHAL (D-CT): Dozens of young women
lay before Larry Nassar, and he did with them what he wanted, with trauma and terror
that will last a lifetime. That pain was preventable. It was needless.
SEN. JOHN CORNYN (R-TX): If FBI did so little in the investigation that involved
world-class athletes, what hope can an average American have?
AMNA NAWAZ: The FBI's failures were laid out in a July report
from the Justice Department's inspector general.
It found FBI field offices failed to formally document a July 2015 meeting with USA Gymnastics
when the FBI first received allegations against Nassar, they waited five weeks to conduct a phone
interview with one of the athletes who was abused, and failed to reach out to others altogether,
and that the special agent in charge made false statements and omitted material information,
in an attempt to minimize errors made by the Indianapolis field office.
The special agent in charge went so far as to seek
out a potential job opportunity with the U.S. Olympic Committee.
FBI Director Christopher Wray called the FBI's inaction unacceptable.
CHRISTOPHER WRAY, FBI Director: When I received the inspector general's report and saw that the
supervisory agent in Indianapolis had failed to carry out even the most basic parts of the job,
I immediately made sure he was no longer performing the functions of a special agent.
And I can now tell you that that individual no longer works for the FBI in any capacity.
AMNA NAWAZ: Still, questions remain about what justice looks like for these women
and the hundreds more who say they were abused by Nassar and failed by the system.
ALY RAISMAN: All we are asking for is that, when a child goes into gymnastics, or goes to school,
or does anything, that they can be spared abuse.
And the fact that we have been treated like adversaries by so many organizations,
and our abuse has been diminished, we have been victim-shamed online over and over again,
we have been gaslit, we have been made to feel that we don't matter
by these organizations, and I never want another child to feel that way again.
AMNA NAWAZ: For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm Amna Nawaz.