The F.B.I. mishandled child sexual abuse allegations even after enacting new protocols since its bungled investigation into Lawrence G. Nassar’s assault of young gymnasts, the Justice Department’s watchdog found in a report released on Thursday.
Michael E. Horowitz, the department’s inspector general, found that 42 of 327 sexual abuse cases reviewed were plagued with serious problems — including a lack of coordination with local law enforcement and a failure to follow up on leads — that required immediate attention from the bureau.
The inspector general found “no evidence” that the F.B.I.’s investigators reported instances of sexual abuse to local, state and tribal authorities in roughly half the cases it reviewed. That same issue led to a long delay of an investigation into Mr. Nassar by the bureau’s field offices in Los Angeles and Indianapolis, according to the report.
Mr. Nassar, the former national gymnastics team doctor who is now in prison, abused at least 70 girls and women during that delay, which lasted more than a year. He molested hundreds of his patients, including the Olympic champion Simone Biles, under the guise of medical treatment.
In at least one instance aside from the Nassar case, Mr. Horowitz noted in the latest report, a child continued to be abused by an adult a year after a complaint was made to the bureau.
In 2021, Christopher A. Wray, the F.B.I. director, called the bureau’s failure in the Nassar investigation “inexcusable,” vowing to do “everything in our power to make sure it never happens again.”
In statement, Senator Richard J. Durbin, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, urged the bureau’s leaders to “answer for the inspector general’s grave findings” and said he would hold hearings this year to determine why they had not sufficiently improved their procedures.
“It’s shameful that the F.B.I. is continuing to fail victims,” he added.
The inspector general’s audit covers Oct. 1, 2021, to Feb. 26, 2023. It is a follow-up to a scathing report in 2021 that found widespread failures in the Nassar case, and recommended significant improvements to the bureau’s protocols and training procedures.
Mr. Horowitz cited significant improvements since then, praising the bureau’s cooperation and overall effort to comply with his previous recommendations.
But he identified several structural flaws that continue to hamper those improvements, most notably the high caseloads — 40 to 60 cases per investigator — that might be contributing to the persistent problems with the system.
“It’s critically important that the F.B.I. appropriately handle all allegations of hands-on sex offenses against children,” Mr. Horowitz said in a statement. “Failure to do so can result in children continuing to be abused.”
F.B.I. officials, speaking to reporters on Thursday, said the inspector general’s findings were consistent with the results of internal audits they have conducted in the wake of the Nassar case.
But they also claimed that most of the problems cited by Mr. Horowitz were technical paperwork issues. Relatively few had resulted in serious allegations falling through the cracks, they said, adding that new training protocols, which will be enforced in the next few weeks, will enhance improvements that have already been made.
Investigators have been swamped by the rise in child sexual abuse complaints, and the lack of sufficient funding for new positions, they added.
But Mr. Horowitz said the bureau should be doing more to address its shortcomings. He said that in 18 of the cases, he identified serious deficiencies that required “further action” by the F.B.I., not just added documentation.
One of the cases involved an allegation by an adult victim against an abuser who had perpetrated the crimes years earlier. It took the F.B.I. about a year to aggressively pursue the lead, and during that time the person “allegedly victimized at least one additional minor,” according to the report.
The person identified as the attacker was charged in June 2023 with producing child pornography and child sex abuse.
In a letter to Mr. Horowitz, Michael D. Nordwall, an assistant deputy director of the F.B.I., said that most of the issues reflected a failure to “properly document” investigative steps that had already been taken.
Agents had moved “quickly” to address “the handful of cases” in which more substantive investigative issues had been found, he added.
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