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McKayla Maroney says Larry Nassar molested her 'hundreds' of times

In an interview with NBC that will be televised Sunday, Olympic gold medalist McKayla Maroney said Larry Nassar molested her 'hundreds' of times.
Credit: Nick Laham/Getty Images
Gymnast, McKayla Maroney, poses for a portrait during the 2012 Team USA Media Summit on May 14, 2012 in Dallas, Texas.

In an interview with NBC that will be televised Sunday night, Olympic gold medalist McKayla Maroney said Larry Nassar molested her "hundreds" of times, including on her first visit to Karolyi Ranch, the USA Gymnatics team's training facility in Texas.

"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," Maroney told NBC. "I actually was like, 'That makes sense. I don't want to tell anybody about this.' I didn't believe that they would understand."

NBC published excerpts of Maroney's interview Wednesday morning, less than 24 hours after she made her first public comments about Nassar at The New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children charity luncheon in New York.

Maroney said Tuesday that USA Gymnastics, the U.S. Olympic Committee and Michigan State University, which also employed Nassar, ignored the former team doctor's wrongdoing to protect their own reputations.

"All they cared about is money and medals," Maroney said. "It didn’t seem they cared about anything else."

Credit: David Butler II -USA TODAY Sports
McKayla Maroney.

Maroney filed a lawsuit against the three organizations and Nassar in Los Angeles Superior Court in December, alleging that she was required to sign a confidentiality agreement as part of a financial settlement that she needed to pay for psychological treatment stemming from her abuse.

USA Gymnastics said in part of a statement released to USA TODAY Sports on Tuesday that it is "doing everything possible to prevent abuse, and we hope everything we do going forward makes this very clear."

Nassar will spend the rest of his life in prison after receiving two sentences of at least 40 years each in separate Michigan courts earlier this year, in addition to a 60-year sentence on federal child pornography charges in December. Nassar would serve the state sentences concurrently after his federal term.

Maroney's complete interview with NBC will air Sunday night at 7 p.m. ET as part of an investigative edition of "Dateline." The piece will also include interviews with gymnastics coaches Bela and Martha Karolyi, who ran the aforementioned training facility.

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