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McKayla Maroney Reveals When She Realised Larry Nassar Was Abusing Her

McKayla Maroney Reveals When She Realised Larry Nassar Was Abusing Her

She was one of hundreds of girls who was abused by the USA Gymnastics team doctor

Stewart Perrie

Stewart Perrie

Disgraced USA gymnastics national team doctor Larry Nassar was sentenced to 40 to 125 years behind bars for three counts of sexual assault.

Hundreds of girls came forward with their traumatic experiences as victims of Nassar and how he used his position to abuse them while they were aiming to make the Olympics.

McKayla Maroney, one of Nassar's most high-profile victims, has broken her silence of her encounters with him and how it took a long time for her to work out what he was doing was wrong.

The multiple gold medal gymnast has told NBC's Dateline that he had done 'the treatment', which is what he called his pelvic examinations, to her multiple times. But it was when they were in a hotel in Tokyo in 2011 that things were different.

"That was the scariest night," she told the American TV network. "He went, like, overboard that night."

She was just 15 years old at this point.

PA

"[It] was very, very hard for me not to acknowledge the fact that... this was not treatment. I was being abused. I was bawling, naked on a bed, him on top of me, like fingering me.

"I thought I was going to die. It was escalating."

It was this aggressive sexual abuse that made her understand she wasn't just getting a 'pelvic examination'.

She added: "I remember waking up the next day and wanting to tell someone - and hoping that someone would see it in my eyes that something really bad just happened to me, that they would ask me."

PA

That day she eventually told USA Gymnastics coach John Geddert in front of three other people about what she suffered. That was in 2011, four years before USA Gymnastics says it first heard of Nassar's 'treatment'.

Geddert has since been suspended by USA Gymnastics because of allegations that he physically and verbally abused gymnasts. He's also the subject of an unrelated criminal investigation in Michigan.

Maroney also revealed that Nassar abused her the first time he first examined her.

PA

She said: "I didn't know how to understand what was happening because I felt so lucky to be with him, so it was obviously a very confusing moment."

Nassar apparently instructed her not to tell anyone about her 'treatment' and that it was just a part of his methods.

The now 22-year-old decided to speak out because she was furious with how long it took for Nassar to finally receive justice, even though he had been abusing hundreds of girls for years and no one did anything about it.

Featured Image Credit: PA

Topics: olympics, News, US News