McKayla Maroney Is Suing USA Gymnastics For Attempting To ‘Silence’ Her

Former Olympic gymnast McKayla Maroney recently told her #MeToo story. She said she was repeatedly molested by team doctor Larry Nassar.

“I was molested by Dr. Larry Nassar, the team doctor for the US Women’s National Gymnastics Team. Dr. Nassar told me that I was receiving ‘medically necessary treatment that he had been performing on patients for over 30 years.’ 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,” she wrote.

“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,” she continued. “For me the scariest night of my life happened when I was 15 years old. I had flown all day and night with the team to get to Tokyo. He’d given me a sleeping pill for the flight, and 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.”

It’s not over. Maroney has filed a lawsuit, alleging that USA Gymnastics tried to silence her. Word has it they paid her $1.25 million to keep her mouth shut.

Maroney’s attorney, John Manly, called the confidentiality agreement “hypocritical, immoral and in this case illegal.”

“Those responsible for this should be removed from the Olympic movement and USA Gymnastics,” Manly told NBC News. “If they would treat one of the most famous athletes in world like this, how poorly would they treat a recreational gymnast abused by her coach.”

Yikes.

Maroney’s suit, filed in Superior Court in California, alleges that USA Gymnastics insisted on a confidentiality agreement so “it could further conceal and shield from public scrutiny, outside investigation, and law enforcement, the true nature of Nassar’s horrific sexual abuse of minors.”

“Plaintiff alleges that Defendant USAG had a plan to keep the sexual abuse of Nassar quiet, and allow Nassar to quietly leave USAG, further silencing his victims,” the suit charges.

The lawsuit states that Maroney is still “gripped by depression and anxiety. She fears he took inappropriate photos of her and shared them with other perverts.

“Nassar would continuously, obsessively and compulsively photograph McKayla Maroney and is believed to have possessed thousands of photographs of McKayla Maroney competing in gymnastics events, training, in everyday situations,” the court papers say.

“McKayla Maroney alleges that she believes photographs were taken of her while Nassar was sexually abusing her under the guise of treatment. McKayla Maroney is further informed and believes, and on that basis alleges, that these photographs were shared by Nassar with other pedophiles for their sexual gratification.

“McKayla Maroney continues to worry, distress, experience concern, anxiety, and depression over whether Nassar’s photographs of her are still circulating through the internet, and whether they are possessed by other pedophiles and sexual deviants, and whether she will ever know how widely these photographs have been shared or whether they will eventually surface later in her lifetime.”

Hence, the lawsuit.

So yeah. This is happening. Thoughts?

h/t NBC