The U.S. Justice Department is investigating multiple wide-ranging criminal accusations of sexual abuse in U.S. Olympic sports organizations and also looking into potential financial and business misconduct by several governing bodies, sources told The Wall Street Journal. A source told the WSJ that the inquiry appeared to be examining “failures in the Olympic system, writ large, to respond to signs of widespread child abuse.” The DOJ is also examining whether former executives of USA Gymnastics, USA Taekwondo, and other sports bodies engaged in unethical conduct and inappropriately handled complaints. Potential witnesses have been speaking to prosecutors and the IRS about the alleged abuse.
Coming in the wake of the Larry Nassar sexual-abuse scandal, the investigation shows a sustained thirst for accountability leading up to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Earlier this year, the Justice Department’s money-laundering and child-exploitation units and the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, D.C., sent grand-jury subpoenas to entities including the United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee and the U.S. Center for SafeSport, a nonprofit set up in 2017 to handle reports of abuse in Olympic sports, according to the WSJ.
Read it at Wall Street Journal