FBI has ‘significant issues’ with responding to child sex abuse, only 17 percent of cases ‘fully documented’: watchdog group

The DOJ's Office of the Inspector General reviewed and sampled 327 cases of child sex abuse. It flagged 42 of those cases - 13 percent - that needed "immediate attention" from authorities as part of its audit. It found that the FBI struggled to meet expectations required under law to respond to these cases. Some of this included mandatory reporting requirements.

In 50 percent of cases, the FBI failed to report child sex abuse cases to social services agencies, and in the cases that were reported, only 43 percent of those reports were made in the required time frame of 24 hours. Only 17 of all cases sampled by the Inspector General met standards to be "fully documented" for reporting purposes.

The report also revealed "instances where FBI employees did not comply with relevant law or policy for (a) mandatory reporting of suspected child abuse, (b) victim services, (c) transferring incidents between field offices, and (d) responding to allegations of active and ongoing child sexual abuse within 24 hours." This resulted in real-world consequences.

"In one example, the FBI received an allegation involving hands-on abuse by a registered sex offender and opened a predicated investigation. However, the FBI did not take appropriate investigative action for over 1 year or refer the suspected child abuse to the state, local, tribal, and territorial (SLTT) law enforcement agency with jurisdiction," the report stated. "During this period, the subject allegedly victimized at least one additional minor for a period of approximately 15 months."

The audit made 11 recommendations to the agency. These included a "method to monitor FBI employees’ compliance with mandatory reporting of suspected child abuse,” "policies for field offices on documenting and responding to incoming allegations of sexual abuse or the sexual exploitation of a child,” as well as implementing “sufficient controls to prevent users from self-approving documents that require approval/authority within investigative case files."