Total Failure: Audit Reveals Just How Badly the FBI Still Mishandles Child Sex Abuse Cases
On Thursday, the U.S. Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General released an audit evaluating the FBI’s handling of child sex offense cases. The findings are critical of the FBI, indicating that the agency has not improved its practices since previous scandals, particularly regarding the failures associated with Lawrence Nassar, a former doctor for the USA Gymnastics team who abused numerous victims. The audit reveals that since the earlier report in July 2021, the FBI has continued to mishandle allegations of child sexual abuse, allowing cases to go unaddressed for months while more children were victimized. Specific instances noted in the audit illustrate significant delays in investigation and lack of communication among agencies, underscoring a troubling pattern of inaction. The report recommends several solutions to improve the FBI’s handling of such serious allegations.
The U.S. Department of Justice Office of the Inspector’s General published the findings of an audit into the FBI’s handling of sex offenses against children on Thursday.
The findings did not paint the Federal Bureau of Investigation in a particularly favorable light.
The DOJ was very straightforward about the purpose of this audit: “The objective of this audit was to evaluate the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) compliance with laws, regulations, and policies related to its handling of tips of hands-on sex offenses against children and mandatory reporting of suspected child abuse.
“‘Hands-on’ sex offense is a term used to describe an offense that includes physical sexual contact.
“This audit was intended to follow up on issues identified in the Office of the Inspector General’s (OIG) July 2021 report on the FBI’s handling of allegations against Lawrence Gerard Nassar (OIG Nassar Report) and respond to congressional inquiries regarding the FBI’s practices to protect children.”
If the name “Nassar” rings a bell, it’s because he is the infamous former Michigan State and Team USA gymnastics team doctor who used his position to sexually abuse hundreds of girls and women.
Nassar, who also pleaded guilty to having child pornography, is currently serving out an effective life sentence (the man is 61, with over 50 years left on his sentence) in prison, where he has reportedly had a rough time.
Nassar’s actions in and of themselves were monstrous enough, and the disgraced doctor has since been brought to relative justice.
But the matter of how Nassar was able to run amok for so long still lingered … and some rather prominent voices (like Team USA superstar gymnast Simone Biles) put some of that blame squarely on the FBI.
Biles and her fellow critics were proven right with that aforementioned July 2021 report from the FBI, but this new audit is purporting that the FBI has not gotten much better in the ensuing years of the Nassar fallout.
CNN interpreted the findings of the lengthy audit as thus: “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.”
The outlet added: “Because of those failures, allegations of sexual abuse against children were left unaddressed for months while minors continued to be victimized, the audit found.”
Indeed, the audit itself provided some harrowing specific examples of FBI failure.
“In December 2021, the FBI received an allegation through its National Threat Operations Center (NTOC) of a historical incident involving the subject — a registered sex offender — engaging in sexual activity with a minor victim that involved travel across state lines,” the audit noted. “The victim, who was an adult at the time of reporting, alleged that the subject may have enticed other minor victims. In response to this tip, an FBI field office opened a full investigation into the matter about 2 weeks later.
“In January 2022, the FBI field office that opened the investigation set a lead to a second field office requesting an interview of the victim but we did not identify evidence that the victim was interviewed or offered victim services.
“At the time of our review, the most recent substantive investigative activity documented in the case file was over 7 months old and documented in August 2022.
“We did not identify any referrals to the SLTT law enforcement agency with jurisdiction or the subject’s probationary officer.”
Worse yet, once this incident was flagged, the FBI acted “over 1 year after receipt of allegations” to collect more incriminating evidence against the subject.
Another example of prolonged FBI inaction came when the audit chronicled an incident in May 2022.
“In May 2022, NTOC received an anonymous complaint of sex trafficking of unknown minors and drug trafficking by an identified subject.31 NTOC transferred this complaint to the appropriate FBI field office, but we did not identify any evidence of verbal contact between NTOC and the FBI field office, as required by FBI policy,” the audit noted. “Despite the sex trafficking of minors allegation, the first investigative activities documented in the case file by the FBI field office assigned the complaint were completed approximately 5 and 8 months after the receipt of the allegation.”
Yet another example provided by the audit noted that a separate investigation was “inappropriately placed on pending inactive status” and didn’t include any proper referrals.
The audit recommends a number of fixes and solutions.
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