A group of more than 90 women believes the FBI failed them when they needed them the most. Dr. Larry Nassar’s sexual abuse survivors filed a lawsuit for more than $1 billion.
Local 4 spoke to three survivors who now refer to themselves as activists. They say as much an emotional toll it is to bring up old wounds, the FBI needs to be held accountable for not listening and not taking original complaints against Nassar seriously.
Alyssa Corn was a cheerleader who saw Nassar from 2011 until his final days and said, “The FBI is the place that we go to when there’s a big problem. They brushed us off. Why isn’t this not a big problem?”
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In July 2015, the FBI received credible complaints from numerous sources about Nassar sexually assaulting young women and children. FBI didn’t move forward with any of them, and from that time to September 2016, Nassar sexually assaulted 90 young women.
The U.S. Department of Justice looked into the actions of FBI officials and, in May 2022, announced they were not charging the officials.
Corn said, “This perpetuates the stigma of ‘who will believe me?’”
Another survivor and gymnast, Erin Blayer, said, “It was just extremely frustrating and almost scary because you want to have trust in people. You want to be able to believe that people in power are going to do the right thing and hold those accountable who let over 100 girls down.”
If the Department of Justice doesn’t hold the FBI accountable, those women hope a more than $1 billion lawsuit will.
Related: No charges for agents in botched Larry Nassar probe
“If anything, we’ve been betrayed by not one institution but three institutions. And this is more to make an impact and to start changing some of these institutions that have once again betrayed us and mishandled the situation,” said Samantha Roy, a survivor and former University of Michigan gymnast. “To be quite honest with you. I don’t care about the money right now. I care that these institutions are truly going to make a change and that for the people who come after us it does not have to happen again.”
According to officials, the FBI has six months to respond to this claim.