McKayla Maroney says she was abused by Larry Nassar 'hundreds' of times

McKayla Maroney was molested “hundreds” of times by former USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar, the Olympic gold medal-winning gymnast said on Wednesday.

Maroney, who helped the US gymnastics team known as the Fierce Five to the team gold at the London Olympics, told the Today Show’s Savannah Guthrie that the abuse by Nassar started at her first meeting with him when she was 13 and continued for years afterwards.

Nassar pleaded guilty to molesting female athletes under the guise of medical treatment and was sentenced this year to life in prison.

TODAY (@TODAYshow) .@McKaylaMaroney reveals she was molested "hundreds" of times https://t.co/uaHKHzt3nl

“He told me he was going to do a check-up on me and that was the first day I was abused,” Maroney, 22, told Guthrie. “He said that nobody would understand this and the sacrifice that it takes to get to the Olympics, so you can’t tell people this.”

“He didn’t say it in a way that was mean or anything like that,” Maroney added. “I actually was like, “’That makes sense. I don’t want to tell anybody about this’. And I didn’t believe that they would understand.”

'I was molested by Dr Larry Nassar': how the gymnastics sexual abuse scandal unfolded Read more

In an interview with NBC news program Dateline airing on Sunday, Maroney opens up about the years of abuse by Nassar.

Bela and Martha Karolyi, the former USA Gymnastics national team coordinators, will also speak for the first time about the sex abuse scandal.

Timeline Larry Nassar abuse case Show Hide Larry Nassar joins USA Gymnastics as a trainer

According to a lawsuit, Nassar commits his first recorded assault, abusing a 12-year-old girl in the guise of medical research. A year later Nassar gains his medical degree from Michigan State University, where he will commit many of his assaults. Nassar becomes national medical coordinator for USA Gymnastics before the Atlanta Olympics. He will go on to treat athletes at the next five Olympics and abuse many of them. Olympic champions Simone Biles, Aly Raisman, Gabby Douglas and McKayla Maroney are among those who said they were abused by Nassar under the guise of medical treatment. The first recorded complaints about Nassar are received. According to a 2017 lawsuit, youth gymnastics coach John Geddert fails to investigate the allegations. Claims against Nassar go public for the first time after the Indianapolis Star publishes an investigation into sexual abuse at USA Gymnastics. Rachael Denhollander files a criminal complaint against Nassar, saying she was first abused by him when she was 15. Eighteen women file a lawsuit against Nassar, USA Gymnastics, MSU and Twistars Gymnastics Club. The lawsuit alleges Nassar assaulted the women over a period of 20 years and the institutions named in the suit failed to prevent his behaviour. Nassar pleads guilty to seven charges of criminal sexual abuse. He later pleads guilty to three further accounts as part of a plea agreement. Nassar is given a jail term of up to 175 years for sexually abusing athletes in his care. In total, 156 women make impact statement at his sentence hearing, saying he abused them. Handing down the sentence, Judge Rosemarie Aquilina says: “I just signed your death warrant”.

In October, Maroney became the first household name to come forward when she first revealed that she was sexually abused by Nassar from the age of 13 until her retirement from the sport last year.

“People should know that this is not just happening in Hollywood,” Maroney wrote in a lengthy Twitter post inspired by the #MeToo movement, the hashtag campaign that’s encouraged victims of sexual harassment or assault to step forward with their stories. “This is happening everywhere. Wherever there is a position of power, there seems to be potential for abuse. I had a dream to go to the Olympics, and the things that I had to endure to get there, were unnecessary, and disgusting.”

Her revelations were soon followed by Simone Biles, Gabby Douglas, Aly Raisman, Jordyn Wieber and dozens more whom Nassar abused over two decades at Michigan State University, where he was a respected faculty member celebrated for his two-decade body of work with the United States’ world-beating women’s gymnastics team.

Nearly 200 of them offered testimony during two sentencing hearings in Michigan this year.

The scandal prompted the entire board of directors at USA Gymnastics, the sport’s governing body in the United States, to resign, along with the president and athletic director at Michigan State University, where Nassar also worked.

A series of criminal and civil investigations have been launched into the United States Olympic Committee, USA Gymnastics and Michigan State after numerous accusers said their complaints about Nassar were ignored for years.