Nassar, a doctor who was convicted of sexually assaulting young female gymnasts, was stabbed multiple times in the chest, back and neck in the Florida federal prison where he is serving a 60-year sentence, according to two people with knowledge of the situation.
They said Mr. Nassar, 59, is in stable condition after he was attacked by another inmate at the Coleman Federal Correctional Complex, a sprawling prison complex in central Florida.
It was not clear when the altercation occurred or what led to the attack. A spokeswoman for the Federal Bureau of Prisons, which manages the complex, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The episode adds to the long and turbulent case of a former high-profile sports doctor who is accused of molesting and assaulting dozens of young women and children, including Michigan State University athletes, Olympians and members of the US National Gymnastics Team – allegedly for providing treatment and examinations.
In a scathing 2021 report, the Justice Department inspector general finds that the FBI initially botched the investigation, allowing Mr. Nassar to assault more young women.
Mr. Nassar was convicted on federal charges in 2017. A Michigan judge sentenced him to 40 to an additional 125 years in prison a year later, after pleading guilty to three additional counts of sexual assault. A federal judge ordered that sentence to be carried out concurrently and returned him to federal custody.
It is also the latest in a series of suicides and violent attacks on some of the most high-profile prisoners in the chronically understaffed Federal Bureau of Prisons. Last month, Theodore J.
In 2018, James Bulger, a Boston gangster known as Whitey, was bludgeoned to death in a federal prison after being transferred to a West Virginia prison in 2018 after a series of administrative failures and protocol violations left him unattended and vulnerable. The inspector general found the attack. The inspector general said in a report released last month that a similar dysfunctional environment was rife at the Manhattan federal prison where financier Jeffrey Epstein hanged himself in 2019.
Last year, 13 female athletes who were sexually assaulted by Mr. Nassar demanded $10 million from the FBI, alleging that agents mishandled the investigation, allowing it to continue to abuse more victims.
The athletes in the lawsuit were abused by Mr. Nassar when they were at the Gymnastics Twistars Club, outside of Lansing, Michigan. John Geddert, who owned Twistars and referred injured athletes to Mr. Nassar, fueling a cycle of abuse, killed himself in 2021 after being accused of trafficking with humans.
Attorneys said some of the athletes, who were middle school or high school students at the time, were assaulted after the FBI first learned of the abuse allegations in 2015.
In 2021, the department’s inspector general harshly criticized the FBI’s handling of the case, saying Mr. Nassar had abused 70 or more youth athletes since July 2015, when USA Gymnastics first reported allegations against him to the FBI’s Indianapolis field office. until August 2016, when the Michigan State University Police Department received a separate complaint.