Former United States gymnast and two-time Olympic medalist McKayla Maroney revealed in a Twitter post using the #MeToo hashtag that she was sexually assaulted for years by former US gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar:
#MeToo pic.twitter.com/lYXaDTuOsS
— mckayla (@McKaylaMaroney) October 18, 2017
The 21-year-old said that the abuse began when she was as young as 13.
“Dr. Nassar told me that I was receiving ‘medically necessary treatment that he had been performing on patients for over 30 years,'” Maroney wrote. “It started when I was 13 years old, at one of my first National Team training camps, in Texas, and it didn’t end until I left the sport. It seemed whenever and wherever this man could find the chance, I was ‘treated.'”
Those treatments involved intra-vaginal and intra-rectal procedures that even occurred before she won the gold medal as a part of the “Fierce Five” and the silver in the vault at the 2012 Summer Games in London.
She even recounted a harrowing night as a 15-year-old when Nassar gave her sleeping pills while on a flight to Tokyo in what she called “the scariest night of my life.”
“The next thing I know, I was all alone with him in his hotel room getting a ‘treatment.’ I thought I was going to die that night.”
Nassar has been accused of abusing over 140 women and is facing 22 counts of first-degree criminal sexual conduct and could be sentenced to life in prison on Nov. 27. He recently pled guilty to possessing child pornography and destroying the files last summer.
