Truth behind McKayla Maroney's claim that Larry Nassar tried to kill her at 15
Former Olympic gymnast McKayla Maroney has revealed traumatizing details about her abuse by disgraced gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar. More shockingly, she shared that she once feared Nassar would kill her after he molested her in a hotel room at the age of 15. "You know, to be a great athlete, we sometimes have to do things that other people wouldn’t do. This is what it takes to be great," Nassar reportedly said while sexually abusing her. Maroney opened up about her past ordeal in a recent interview with Elle.
Larry Nassar was convicted in 2017 as a serial rapist and sex offender after he was accused of sexually assaulting over 265 women and girls associated with the US gymnastics team over the years. He was sentenced to life imprisonment and is currently serving his sentence at a federal prison. Meanwhile, former Team USA coach John Geddert, who was associated with Nassar, committed suicide after he was accused of abusing young female gymnasts.
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A few weeks ago, McKayla Maroney, who is now 25, shared on her Instagram how Nassar forced her to perform at a gymnastics event, despite suffering from a concussion, broken nose and a broken foot. During the 2012 London Olympics, where Maroney fetched gold and silver medals, she was affected by a series of health complications. Despite being aware of her condition, Nassar lied to coach Mártha Károlyi, thereby forcing her to participate.
Nassar reportedly molested Maroney for years since the age of 13, when he sexually abused her at one of her first training camps. As a budding teenage gymnast, Maroney was sent for training at the infamous Karolyi Ranch, where former coaches Bela and Martha Karolyi enabled Nassar's abuse. The young gymnastics aspirants, all of whom were girls, were treated like they were in military camps, subjected to many forms of hardships.
"It was a perfect breeding ground for Larry Nassar to sneak in. Our coaches were so focused on us being skinny and us being the best to get the gold medal for their own ego," she recalled. There were times when Maroney and the other girls would try tightening their legs around Nassar and imploring him to check other parts of their body, as he would sexually violate them in the name of check-ups. "No, don’t do that. We just want you to work on our backs, our shins, our feet. And we’d be annoyed. We’d be mad. We all hated it," she recounted the horror during her latest interview.
Though the girls were aware of the abuse they had to endure, they were unable to fully comprehend the gravity of the same, given their young age. "We never said we’re being molested, but we would say, 'It’s like we’re being fingered.' We’d even say it was time to go get fingered by Larry. But we were 13 and didn’t even know what being fingered was at the time. We were really young and naïve from living in a gym," Maroney shared.
During the 2012 London Olympics, when Maroney was only 15-years-old, Nassar reportedly gave her a sleeping pill on the flight. She later found herself alone with him in his hotel room. Nassar proceeded to abuse her for 50 minutes as she was naked and sobbing the entire time. "(He) blacked out — kind of like he forgot how long he was doing it, because the whole time he’s pleasuring himself, he’s enjoying it," she shared.
Meanwhile, Maroney was so desperate and afraid that she began looking for a knife to defend herself. At that time, she had felt that Nassar was going to kill her. "I thought he was going to kill me that night. I was like, There’s no way he is going to let me go after what he just did to me. What’s stopping me from saying he did this to me? But then he was like, "Okay, you can go to bed." I felt completely unsafe. And that was the first time I was like, that was abuse."
Even though she tried to report about Nassar, being surrounded by toxic, intimidating coaches at a foreign venue and without her mother by her side, the young gymnast could not go through with it.
"It started when I was 13 years old, and 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." It happened in London before my team and I won the gold medal, and it happened before I won my silver," Maroney had previously shared in a Twitter thread in October 2017. The abuse left her traumatized and she developed an eating disorder trying to cope up with the same.