WASHINGTON − Even after the notorious Larry Nassar case, a Justice Department watchdog said Thursday the FBI continued to have failures to investigate reports of child sexual abuse appropriately. Inspector General Michael Horowitz flagged 42 cases in the last three years that appeared to “require immediate attention” but didn’t receive it, including one in which a reported victim continued to be abused for 15 months after the initial report.

The report suggested the FBI continued to have problems with a lack of investigation, not reporting cases to local law enforcement as required and not following the agency’s own policies.

The problems stemmed at least in part by a lack of staffing. FBI agents investigating child sexual abuse were each handling scores of cases. Multiple FBI officials told auditors they lacked resources to investigate the cases, with one agent assigned about 60 cases saying that burden led to cases “falling through the cracks,” the report said.

“Today’s report found that since the time It received allegations against Nassar, the FBI has implemented training, policy updates and system changes to improve its handling of allegations of crimes against children,” Horowitz said in a letter accompanying the report. “However, we identified numerous instances where the FBI didn’t appropriately respond to such allegations.”

The FBI contends it has adopted a new approach.

“We’ve made mistakes, and we recognize that, and we’re making efforts to ensure that those don’t happen,” a senior FBI official said on a call with media shortly before the report’s public release.

The FBI agreed with all 11 recommendations from Horowitz and fixed two of the problems as the report was drafted. The FBI argued that most of the criticism covered paperwork problems.

“Most of the incidents flagged reflected the failure to properly document completed investigated steps or involved investigations where no additional action was necessary,” Michael Nordwall, FBI executive assistant director, wrote in reply to the report. “In the handful of cases where we identified a need for additional investigative steps or reporting to state, local, tribal, or territorial law enforcement, we worked to ensure all necessary steps were completed.”

The report comes three years after Horowitz criticized the FBI for failing to respond urgently to allegations of sexual abuse against athletes by Larry Nassar, the former USA Gymnastics physician. Nassar was convicted of abusing more than 100 athletes, including Olympic champions Simone Biles, McKayla Maroney and Aly Raisman.

Nassar’s reign of sexual abuse wasn’t stopped until the allegations were publicly exposed in September 2016 by an IndyStar investigation, part of the USA TODAY Network. Nassar is serving a more than 100-year sentence.

Here is what the report found:

What were flaws in FBI investigations of child sexual abuse?

The FBI opened 3,925 cases alleging child sexual abuse from Oct. 1, 2021, through Feb. 26, 2023. Horowitz reviewed 327 incidents and found 42 flagged for the FBI “because we believed they may require immediate attention.” The cases included:

• In December 2021, the FBI’s National Threat Operations Center received an allegation that a registered sex offender was engaging in sex with a minor that involved travel across state lines. After auditors reviewed the file, the FBI interviewed the victim and offered services a year after receiving the allegation. Auditors learned the suspect victimized another minor for 15 months after the initial allegation.
• In February 2022, a social worker reported allegations to the FBI that a suspect was engaging in sex with a minor involving travel across state lines. The FBI investigated but the case wasn’t referred to local law enforcement and the case was later marked inactive. In response to questions from auditors, the FBI presented the case to the U.S. attorney’s office, which declined to prosecute. The FBI agent assigned the case had 44 pending cases.
• In September 2022, the FBI received an anonymous tip alleging a suspect with multiple previous sex offense convictions was trafficking of minors. Auditors didn’t find any referral to local law enforcement. The FBI said the initial investigating agent was transferred and administrative oversight of the case was delayed. The new case agent was assigned a year after the initial complaint and three months after auditors flagged it for the FBI.

In response to the 42 flagged incidents, the FBI said it would add documentation to the files in 17 cases and take further action in 18 cases. The FBI determined no further action was needed in five cases and two were flagged solely for FBI awareness.

Part of the problem was blamed on staffing. Auditors found 15 FBI field offices proposed to reorganize their staffing levels to deal with crimes against children from 2020 to 2022, but only one agent in one office was approved for transfer, according to the report. FBI headquarters told the offices to use available resources, including referring cases to state and local partners and other investigators.

Despite an increasing load of cases during the last three years, the number of agents assigned to crimes against children dropped from 432 in 2022 to 429 last year, according to the report.

What did the inspector recommend to the FBI?

Horowitz’s 11 recommendations were topped by one that remained unresolved since the Nassar report: the FBI needs to develop and implement a method to monitor FBI compliance with mandatory reporting of suspect child sexual abuse and take appropriate remedial action.

Other recommendations include:

• Ensure all incidents involving an imminent or ongoing threat to a child are handled within 24 hours as required.
• Notify victims about services available to them.
• Enhance monitoring of leads to ensure they are covered in a timely and appropriate manner.

“As a whole, the results of our audit demonstrate that the FBI needs to improve compliance with policies and laws in multiple areas, including mandatory reporting of suspected child abuse, providing victim services, transferring incidents between field offices, self-approvals, and responding to allegations of active or ongoing child sexual abuse,” the report said.

The FBI agreed with the recommendations and accomplished two while the report was prepared. One was to update procedures for staffers handling allegations to describe when incidents are time sensitive. The other was to update policies for field offices to document and respond to new allegations of sexual exploitation of a child.

The FBI continues to improve, we continue to make changes to processes, policies, and training to ensure that mistakes are not made, a senior FBI official said.

What did Horowitz find with the Nassar investigation?

In the Nassar report in July 2021, Horowitz found the FBI field office in Indianapolis failed to respond urgently to allegations of sexual abuse and made fundamental mistakes when it did respond. The Indianapolis office also failed to notify other authorities – the FBI field office in Lansing, Michigan, where Nassar worked at Michigan State University, or state and local officials – to combat the threat.

Despite the Indianapolis office received the first complaint in July 2015, the Lansing office learned about the allegations after the MSU Police Department searched his home in September 2016 and discovered child pornography. During the period, Nassar was treating gymnasts at MSU, a Michigan high school and at a gym club.

The Justice Department agreed in April to pay $138.7 million to a group of survivors over the FBI’s mishandling of the sex abuse allegations against Nassar. MSU agreed to distribute $500 million to survivors and USA Gymnastics reached a separate settlement with Nassar’s victims of $380 million.

The report said the FBI failed:

• to properly handle evidence such as a thumb drive from USA Gymnastics President Stephen Penny.
• to transfer the investigation to the Lansing office, the most likely venue for potential federal crimes.
• to document until February 2017 interview conducted in September 2015 of a gymnast’s allegations of sexual assault by Nassar.

Maroney told a Senate hearing after the report was released that she told her entire story of abuse to the FBI in 2015, but when the agency eventually documented the report 17 months later, “they made entirely false claims about what I said.”

Jay Abbott, the FBI special agent in charge of the Indianapolis office, made false statements about the gymnast’s interview to minimize errors made by his office, according to Horowitz.

“Abbott violated FBI policy and exercised extremely poor judgment” when he communicated with Penny about a potential job with the U.S. Olympic Committee, the inspector general’s report said.

Horowitz made four recommendations to the FBI, which the agency accepted. The recommendations were to:

• reassess policies to more precisely describe when FBI staffers are required to contact and coordinate state and local law enforcement about allegations of crimes against children.
• clarify policies about when a supervisor conducts investigative activity.
• develop a policy for when phone interviews of alleged victims of child abuse are appropriate.
• train employees about the policies.