Nassar Victims Reach $380 Million Settlement With USA Gymnastics And U.S. Olympic And Paralympic Committee

A judge said Monday she would approve the settlement after a five-year legal battle between gymnasts including stars and their sport’s governing bodies. Nassar Victims Reach $380 Million Settlement With USA Gymnastics And U.S. Olympic And Paralympic Committee

USA Gymnastics, U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee and their insurers have agreed to fund a $380 million settlement with victims of longtime national team physician Larry Nassar, drawing to a close a five-year legal battle that has upended American Olympic sports governance.

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The sum is among the largest ever recorded for victims of sex abuse and includes hundreds of athletes who were assaulted over three decades.

The decision by the final holdout insurer, TIG Insurance Company, to pay a substantial share of the settlement was confirmed Monday in a hearing in bankruptcy court in Indianapolis. The settlement also includes a direct contribution from the USOPC of around $34 million and a $6 million loan from the USOPC to USA Gymnastics to contribute, as well.

Judge Robyn Moberly said when the court reconvened Monday afternoon that she would approve the settlement, adding that it was part of a reorganization plan that had been overwhelmingly accepted by the survivors and other creditors of USA Gymnastics.

The settlement will include claims from Olympic gold medalists such as Simone Biles, Aly Raisman and McKayla Maroney, who were treated by Nassar during his time as the U.S. women’s squad doctor.

It also includes gymnasts competing for local clubs who sought treatment from Nassar on the strength of his national reputation, and a handful of victims of abusive coaches who had been pursuing claims against the sport’s governing bodies.

It also contains nonmonetary provisions, including requirements for self-identified survivors of abuse in gymnastics to have official roles in USA Gymnastics.

“Money really can’t compensate for what occurred here, but it’s what the legal system can offer,” USA Gymnastics lawyer Catherine Steege said during the hearing, adding that plans for abuse survivors to continue working with the governing body would “make certain something like this doesn’t happen again.”

USA Gymnastics’ chief executive since 2019, Li Li Leung, said after the approval was announced: “USA Gymnastics is deeply sorry for the trauma and pain that Survivors have endured as a result of this organization’s actions and inactions.”

“Individually and collectively, Survivors have stepped forward with bravery to advocate for enduring change in this sport.”

The head of the USOPC since 2018, Sarah Hirshland, said: “We recognize our role in failing to protect these athletes, and we are sorry for the profound hurt they have endured. Reaching a financial resolution is one extremely important piece of the transformation that is taking place within our organization.”

A lawsuit against USA Gymnastics and the USOPC over Nassar was filed in September 2016 by 2000 Olympic bronze medalist Jamie Dantzscher. As additional legal claims poured in, USA Gymnastics filed for bankruptcy in late 2018.

By then, outrage at a slew of revelations over the Olympic movement’s response to Nassar had already contributed to the resignation of many of the top officials at USA Gymnastics and the USOPC, including the leaders of both organizations, Steve Penny and Scott Blackmun.

It still took three more years to reach a settlement, during which time some of the sport’s biggest stars launched a wave of criticism of the organizations they had competed for—in interviews, on social media and in the fall of 2021, in a televised U.S. Senate hearing. The hearing was followed by a call on Congress to unseat the USOPC board over the matter, drawing on new oversight powers that federal lawmakers had voted to obtain in 2020.

TIG had not agreed to its contribution on behalf of the USOPC even after victims voted in favor of the proposed agreement in late November. A late filing from the Department of Justice opposing the release of the USOPC from claims against it as part of the bankruptcy was seen by leaders of the survivors committee as potentially unlocking the dispute. The survivors committee is now expected to agree to the release of the USOPC.

The settlement, once finalized, will almost certainly allow USA Gymnastics to emerge from the bankruptcy process remaining the governing body of the sport, under its new set of leaders. The end of the bankruptcy is expected to give the organization a more solid future, boosting its rebuilding efforts with prospective sponsors in particular.

The USOPC, under new leadership and with a renewed public focus on anti-abuse efforts, will also be looking ahead to a time in which it is not regularly the focus of gymnasts’ condemnation, even as it continues to face claims relating to problems in other national governing bodies. A wide-ranging federal law enforcement investigation into misconduct in the Olympic movement is believed to be ongoing.

But attention in this sprawling scandal with multiple institutional failures is likely to shift most intensely to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, after the DOJ’s inspector general revealed significant mishandling of allegations against Nassar when they were brought to it in 2015 and 2016.

Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco told lawmakers in October that the department was reviewing its decision not to prosecute the FBI agents who disregarded gymnasts’ allegations that Nassar sexually assaulted them, and who later made false statements to cover their mistakes.

“There is one more chapter yet to be written,” said John Manly, a lawyer for some of the most high-profile victims in the case. “We will continue to pursue justice on behalf of the hundreds of little girls and young women who were molested as a direct result of their obstruction of justice.”

Lawyers representing victims had accused USA Gymnastics, for whom Nassar had worked since the 1990s and at four Olympic Games, of creating an environment filled with pressure on athletes to be seen as compliant, creating an atmosphere in which a predator could flourish. Self-identified survivors include other members of the 2016, 2012 and 2000 Olympic teams, 2011 and 2010 world teams, and other national team members going back at least as far as 1996.

Many of the gymnasts were young teenagers at the peak of their involvement with the organization that oversees the sport in the U.S. and controls access to major competitions. They were abused at competitions, at mandatory monthly training camps, and after Nassar was recommended to them.

It also emerged that USA Gymnastics conducted an initial secret, five-week internal inquiry into concerns about Nassar in 2015 before going to law enforcement, that it overlooked some gymnasts with concerns, including Biles, and that the then-named U.S. Olympic Committee was made aware early on of the Nassar allegations within USA Gymnastics but essentially ignored them.

In addition to his work with USA Gymnastics, the former osteopathic physician treated hundreds of women and girls as a sports-medicine doctor at Michigan State University, which settled claims for $500 million in 2018. Elite gymnasts were among those plaintiffs, arguing that Michigan State failed to respond to early complaints against Nassar, including in 2014, a year before USA Gymnastics learned of its athletes’ concerns.

Michigan victims were part of the settlement with USA Gymnastics too, saying that Nassar drew on his reputation as the U.S. team doctor in order to convince them that treatments in which he vaginally penetrated them with his fingers were normal.

Some of those victims include women and girls treated by him after he had been reported to law enforcement but allowed to retire from USA Gymnastics in 2015, and MSU had not been told.Nassar pled guilty to sex abuse and child pornography charges and by early 2018 had been sentenced to an effective life sentence in prison.

Updated: 6-8-2022

Gymnasts File $1 Billion In Claims Against FBI For Mishandling Of Larry Nassar Investigation

The group includes dozens of women and girls assaulted while the agency ignored reports about the doctor—and the stars who raised the alarm.

More than 90 women and girls, including the star gymnasts who raised concerns about Larry Nassar in 2015 that were disregarded by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, filed administrative tort claims against the agency on Wednesday collectively seeking $1 billion.

The claimants include Simone Biles, McKayla Maroney, Maggie Nichols and Aly Raisman, the elite gymnasts who were first identified in the summer of 2015 as having been sexually abused by the then-doctor to the national women’s gymnastics team under the guise of medical treatment.

The group also includes dozens of Nassar patients sexually assaulted by him for more than a year after the FBI was alerted to the gymnasts’ concerns, their lawyers said.

The claims draw on a report released by the Justice Department’s inspector general last year that was sharply critical of the FBI. The report found that FBI agents in Indianapolis—who received an initial visit from USA Gymnastics to report Nassar on July 28, 2015—didn’t take the claims seriously, document the evidence they received or transfer the allegations to the FBI’s resident agency in Lansing, Mich. The report also found the agents later made false statements to cover their mistakes.

Nassar continued to see patients for almost 14 months after USA Gymnastics went to the FBI. He was publicly accused of assault in the fall of 2016, and by early 2018 had been sentenced to an effective life sentence in prison on sexual abuse and child-pornography charges.

The FBI declined to comment.

The claims come after the Justice Department said in late May that it was standing by an earlier decision not to charge the Indianapolis FBI agents who came in for the most criticism in the inspector general’s report.

Biles, Maroney, Nichols and Raisman, who are some of the most famous figures in their sport, are each seeking $50 million from the agency, their lawyers said. That is based on the distress of both being misled about the investigation and finding out that reports of what had happened to them had not been enough to protect others.

The other women and girls—some but not all of whom are identified by name—say they were assaulted by Nassar after the FBI had “credible complaints from numerous sources and corroborating evidence.” The amounts they are seeking vary.

The claim includes a Michigan gymnast who was 18 in 2015, Samantha Roy, and says she was assaulted by Nassar at least 40 times after July 28, 2015. She says she had been abused by him before, too, starting at the age of 12.

“Now that the Department of Justice has decided not to criminally prosecute the responsible agents, we are more determined than ever to expose the FBI’s failures and demand accountability,” Roy said.

The law firms representing the group are Manly Stewart & Finaldi, Pitt McGehee Palmer Bonanni & Rivers, Grewal Law and Drew, Cooper & Anding, and Gruel Mills.

Christopher Wray, the FBI director since 2017, said at a congressional hearing last month that the bureau has made a number of changes since the case unfolded.

“I’m determined to make it right, now that I’m here, and we’re going to make sure that everybody in the FBI learns the lessons from that tragic experience,” he said.

Maroney’s claim also says that damaging misrepresentations were made about her by the FBI agents. One of the most devastating points in the inspector general’s report involved the FBI’s Indianapolis field office telephonic interview with Maroney in early September 2015.

The agent who conducted the interview did not document it until February 2017, which is around the time The Wall Street Journal first reported on delays in the investigation. The agent then recorded statements that Maroney says she did not make, and has never made.

Maroney told the U.S. Senate that “talking about this abuse would give me PTSD for days but I chose to speak about it to try and make a difference and protect others.” To have it “minimized and disregarded” by the FBI was one of the worst things that had happened to her, she said.

Biles, who was unaware that she had been flagged as a potential victim of the doctor, also says that she was harmed by not knowing that her medical treatment had actually been abuse.

Some of Wray’s statements of apology are included as part of the claims filed Wednesday.

FBI missteps have been at the center of several large settlements recently, including at least one in which victims sued citing what they said were failures by the bureau to act.

The Justice Department last year agreed to pay $127.5 million to families of students and staff killed and survivors of a 2018 shooting at a South Florida high school settling lawsuits over the FBI’s failure to investigate tips warning the shooter had guns and planned to attack.

About five weeks before the 2018 shooting that left 17 people dead, a person close to gunman Nikolas Cruz warned the FBI through a tip line offered stark details of his propensity for violence and troubled past that were never shared with the FBI’s Miami field office for investigation.

Within days of the shooting the agency acknowledged mishandling the tip and Mr. Wray apologized. Another caller had months earlier flagged disturbing social media posts to the FBI’s tip line that investigators were unable to link to Cruz.

In recent months the FBI and Justice Department have sought to emphasize changes they have made in the way they investigate sex assault cases. The Justice Department, for example, has told federal agents and prosecutors to coordinate more closely with their state and local counterparts in cases even if they don’t bring federal charges.

That is in response to revelations in the inspector general report that the FBI did not inform state and local authorities of the continuing threat posed by Nassar.

When the Justice Department said last month that it wouldn’t charge the FBI agents, it said it had relied on “the recommendation of experienced prosecutors,” and that the outcome” doesn’t in any way reflect a view that the investigation of Nassar was handled as it should have been.”

Thirteen other women assaulted by Nassar after he was reported to the FBI filed the first administrative tort claims against the agency over the scandal in late April.

Nassar Victims Reach $380 Million Settlement With USA Gymnastics And U.S. Olympic And Paralympic Committee

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