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One day after speaking publicly for the first time about the sexual assault she was forced to endure at the hands of disgraced former USA Gymnastics and Michigan State University physician Larry Nassar, 22-year-old McKayla Maroney stated that the 54-year-old molested her hundreds of times starting when she was just 13 years old.
In fact, Maroney stated that he did so every time she went to him for what she believed was medical treatment at the time.
Maroney, the former Olympic gymnast who spoke Tuesday during a luncheon for the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children at The Pierre hotel in New York, New York, sat down with TODAY's Savannah Guthrie to discuss Nassar's assault.
Here is some of what she had to say, according to Fox News and NBC Sports.
"He told me he was going to do a checkup on me and that was the first day I was abused. 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. I actually was like, 'That makes sense. I don't want to tell anybody about this.’ And I didn’t believe that they would understand. Doing what’s right is not always easy, but I need to speak up for the girls and for the future."
Here is a video of the preview clip that was released Wednesday.
The full interview is set to air on an hourlong Dateline NBC special called "Silent No More" on Sunday, April 22 at 7:00 pm ET.
Interviews with former USA Gymnastics national team coordinators and owners of the USA Gymnastics National Team Training Center at Karolyi Ranch in Huntsville, Texas, Bela and Martha Karolyi, who have not yet spoken about the Nassar scandal, are also featured in this hourlong special.
Maroney accused Nassar of sexual assault in on Twitter back on Wednesday, October 18, 2017, and she became the first high-profile gymnast to do so.
Maroney was a member of the United States Olympic women's gymnastics team for the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, England, and she was the first of four of the team's five members who accused Nassar of sexual assault. Aly Raisman and Gabby Douglas both did so in November of 2017, with Jordyn Wieber doing so earlier this year in January.
After finally being arrested in December of 2016, which was right around the time during which Maroney was forced to enter a non-disclosure agreement with USA Gymnastics, Nassar has been given three lengthy sentences.
He is currently serving his first sentence, a 60-year federal prison sentence that he was given this past December after being charged with three counts of child pornography, at United States Penitentiary Tucson in Tucson, Arizona.
Nassar's second and third sentences are both state prison sentences, with the length of the first one being between 40 and 175 years and the length of the second one being between 40 and 125 years.
His first state prison sentence was given to him in January after a sentencing hearing during which 169 victim impact statements were read, including one that was read on Maroney's behalf. His second state prison sentence was given to him in January after another sentencing hearing during which several more victim impact statements were read.
Up until now, Nassar has been accused of sexually assaulting more than 260 people, many of whom female gymnasts, under the guise of medical treatment for roughly two decades.
