Simone Biles gives emotional testimony about FBI enabling sexual abuse

On Wednesday, Olympic gymnast Simone Biles testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee about the environment that led to her being sexually abused by former Olympic doctor Larry Nassar, NBC News reports.

Filled with emotion, Biles denounced the “entire system” in her opening statement that she alleged allowed Nassar to sexually abuse her and hundreds of other young women and girls for years.

“Let me be clear: I blame Larry Nassar and I also blame an entire system that enabled and perpetrated his abuse,” Biles said, fighting back tears.

“I don’t want another young gymnast or Olympic athlete or anyone else to experience the horror that I and hundreds of others endured before, during and to this day as a result of Larry Nassar’s abuse,” she continued.

Biles said that both the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee and USA Gymnastics were aware that she and scores of other young girls were being abused by Nassar and did nothing to stop the abuse. She said the organizations were supposed to protect her, but they “didn’t do their job.”

Along with Biles, three other gymnasts, McKayla Maroney, Aly Raisman and Maggie Nichols, identified as “Athlete A,” gave testimony that Nassar abused them. Nichols was the first person to go public with allegations against Nassar in the summer of 2015. She claimed the abuse began when she was just 15 years old and left her with chronic back pain.

Biles’ testimony comes after the Justice Department released a general report in July detailing the FBI’s mismanagement of the case against Nassar. The report found that Nassar treated gymnasts at a gymnastics club, a high school and at Michigan State University until September 2016, when the gymnasts first reported the sexual assault allegations to the FBI in 2015, CBS News reported.

FBI Director Christopher Wray said federal investigators made “totally unacceptable” errors in failing to carefully investigate the sexual abuse allegations made against Nassar. An agent who failed to respond to a gymnast’s allegations and later lied about his role in the investigation was recently fired.

“When I received the inspector general’s report and found that the supervisory special agent in Indianapolis had failed to perform even the most basic parts of his job, I immediately ensured that he was no longer performing the functions of a special agent,” Wray said . “And I can tell you now that this person no longer works for the FBI in any capacity.”

Biles said that after reading the report, she felt the FBI had “turned a blind eye to us.”

“We have suffered and continue to suffer because no one at the FBI, USAG or USOPC did what was necessary to protect us,” she said. “We failed and deserve answers. Nassar is where he belongs, but those who enabled him deserve to be held accountable. If this is not the case, I am confident this will continue to happen to other Olympic sports.”

In 2017, Nassar pleaded guilty to abusing 10 of the more than 265 women and girls who said they were abused.

He is serving a prison sentence of up to 175 years.