Olympic champion McKayla Maroney recently said that she’d been sexually abused by disgraced USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar for years, and on Wednesday she filed a lawsuit against USA Gymnastics for supposedly paying her to sign an unlawful confidentiality agreement about that abuse. Maroney later spoke out anyway, and USAG quickly attached itself to her disclosure, which Maroney says was done for PR reasons. Her attorney called it a “systematic cover-up of the entire matter,” and the lawsuit accuses USAG of “[diverting] the public from USAG’s misdeeds and associate itself with disclosure by MCKAYLA MARONEY, which it clearly tried to prevent with this unlawful agreement.”
Maroney says Nassar began abusing her when she was 13 years old, and the lawsuit accuses both USAG and Michigan State of inadequately investigating and disciplining Nassar. “Defendants willfully refused to notify, give adequate warning and implement appropriate safeguards, thereby creating the peril that ultimately damaged MCKAYLA MARONEY,” the lawsuit alleges.
She says she accepted the settlement because she was suffering from psychological trauma and needed it for “lifesaving psychological treatment and care.” Maroney also accused USAG of causing that emotional distress in the first place.
Update (6:22 p.m. ET): In a statement today, USAG said Maroney’s attorney at the time, Gloria Allred, originally suggested “the concept of confidentiality.”
You can read the full lawsuit below.