by Florian Callens
published on Wednesday April 24, 2024 to 11:16 •
2 min read
The US Department of Justice has reached an agreement to pay 138.7 million dollars (130 million euros) in damages to around 100 female gymnasts abused by Larry Nassar. Nassar was the team doctor for the national women’s gymnastics team for many years. Although there had been complaints about him for several years, the FBI never did anything about it.
In September 2016, the bomb exploded in the United States when the local newspaper The Indianapolis Star was the first to report on sexual abuse within USA Gymnastics. The key figure in the whole matter was Larry Nassar, team doctor for the American gymnastics team and at Michigan State University. Over a period of 14 years, Nassar abused at least 265 often underage girls. His victims include several well-known American gymnasts, such as four-time Olympic champion Simone Biles.
In 2017, Nassar confessed to the facts. He was subsequently found guilty of possession of child pornography and sexual abuse in three different trials. For this he was sentenced to prison terms of up to 175 years. Both HBO (At the Heart of Gold: Inside the USA Gymnastics Scandal) as Netflix (Athlete A) made a documentary about the case.
Damages
However, that conviction did not end the matter. Nearly 100 gymnasts filed a complaint against the FBI in the summer of 2022. They then all together demanded more than $1 billion in damages. The women accuse the FBI of serious dereliction of duty by refusing to interview gymnasts who were willing to talk about the abuse more than a year before the Larry Nassar scandal broke. This allowed the doctor to sexually abuse approximately 100 young women and children.
Almost two years after those complaints, an agreement has now been reached on the compensation that the Ministry of Justice will pay to the gymnasts. This concerns an amount of 138.7 million dollars (130 million euros).
1 billion dollars
This amount brings the total compensation received by the victims to approximately $1 billion. In 2018, Michigan State University, where complaints about Nassar had been ignored several times, paid hundreds of victims 500 million dollars (468 million euros). This was followed in 2021 by another 380 million dollars (356 million euros) from USA Gymnastics and the American Olympic & Paralympic Committee.
