McKayla Maroney is only 25 years old but she’s lived a lot of life for her age. She won a Gold and a Silver medal in the 2012 London Olympics, and she was on track to compete in Rio in ‘16, but then she retired at the age of 20, in early 2016, with multiple injuries and her secret about Larry Nassar. We later learned that Maroney was one of the first big-name gymnasts to tell her story to the FBI in 2015. Nassar began abusing her when she was 10 years old and he abused her throughout her career. Maroney, like Aly Raisman and Simone Biles, has been one of the major athletes demanding accountability from US Gymnastics and the FBI, which slow-walked their investigation while Nassar continued to abuse girls. To say that McKayla has been through hell and back is an understatement. She has a heart-wrenching profile in Elle, where she talks about the “Not impressed” meme, the Nassar situation, her disordered eating and a lot more. You can read the full piece here. Some highlights:
Her “not impressed” face: “My mom and dad were never like, ‘McKayla, you have to be perfect,’ I put those expectations on myself. I think that obsessiveness is what it takes.”
Life at the Karolyi Ranch: The young women widely considered to be among the best athletes in the world slept in bunk beds sometimes crawling with bugs, and the bathrooms were dirty. “We were not treated like Olympians, we were treated like we were in a military camp,” Maroney says. “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.”
Nassar molested her the first time during her first training camp: “He was like, ‘You know, to be a great athlete, we sometimes have to do things that other people wouldn’t do.’ Basically, he was silencing me and saying, ‘This is what it takes to be great.’” Maroney remembers tightening her legs, begging Nassar to work on any other part of her body. “We would be like, ‘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. We all talked about it in little ways.”
The FBI’s inaction on Nassar: “It wasn’t a case of one bad apple. Things are changing, but this was a systemic problem.” Fed up with the plodding pace of the FBI investigation, in October 2017, Maroney broke her NDA with USA Gymnastics, which “was forced”on her, according to a lawsuit she filed against the U.S. Olympic Committee, USA Gymnastics, Larry Nassar, and Michigan State University. Maroney was the first of the Fierce Five to bravely go public with her story, writing on Twitter: “I was molested by Dr. Larry Nassar… Our silence has given the wrong people power for too long, and it’s time to take our power back.”
She got tired of reliving her trauma: “To have people say I can’t move forward with my life, because I have to do all this stuff first, was really hard for me. I just wanted to become someone else.”
She developed an eating disorder: “I already had that obsessive control thing, so it just switched from gymnastics to food,” Maroney says. She tried a slew of dangerous fad diets and starved herself for three days in a row. “I forgot I had ever even been successful at gymnastics, because I went from being great to feeling like, ‘Oh my God, I’m ugly, I’m gaining weight, I’m suffering with food, and I just went through all this abuse.’”
Her father died unexpectedly in 2019: Maroney says the grief was like “an ocean of sadness that I couldn’t get out of.” She reverted back to her old coping mechanisms, starving herself for 10 days in order to be “skinny enough” for the funeral.
She’s out of the darkness now: “I want to be looked at as someone who just keeps going, because that’s what we have to do in this life. For so long, I was surviving. Now I feel I’m actually living.”
Throughout the interview, she mentions seeking help for her disordered eating, and her reliance on her family, and then she talks about joining a non-denominational church, Church of the Master Angels. She admits that the whole thing sounds like a cult (and perhaps is pretty cult-y), but she also talks about how much it helped her. Her defense: “It’s obviously not for everyone. If you want to go to a healer, go to a healer. If you like psychics, whatever, do that. At the end of the day, it’s my choice.” Which I agree with? If the church is helping her and she’s making the choice to pay for the sessions, who cares? It’s her business.
As for what she says about the Nassar situation… Elle points out that in between McKayla’s first statement to the FBI in 2015 and the hammer coming down on Nassar in fall 2016, Nassar molested seventy girls. Seventy children were assaulted and abused because the FBI slow-walked their investigation. Disgusting.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red and McKayla’s IG.
Gymnasts start so young. Are there happy stories? Not everyone has been targeted by a predator but it seems everyone has been abused in some manner. (Not to even mention the torture the East German team endured decades ago). But it’s a sport universally loved by all. So the athletes should really have more power, maybe legally assigned advocates since they’re children.
It does seem like a situation that is set-up to make child abuse easy. You’ve got young girls away from their families at these training camps. Add to that the pressure to do well & get to the olympics. The system needs and overhaul of some kind to protect these children.
And wtf is going on at the FBI? This is outrageous!
McKayla got the worst of the molestation. She has talked about how she was molested right before each event she competed in in the Olympics. She was given a sleeping pill and woke up alone and undressed with Nassar abusing her.
These young women were failed by so many people. They were the best in the world at what they do, they work so hard, trained with injuries, and they get abused and discarded by the hundreds. The Karolyis, the entire USAG, and the FBI have a lot to account for. I admire them so much.
No way in hell would I allow a daughter of mine to compete in gymnastics, not under the guidance of these disgusting people. The current USAG executives are still more concerned with covering their own asses than they are with protecting and caring for gymnasts. Maybe they need to shut the entire organization down, sow the ground with salt, and start completely over, with peole like McKayla, Aly Raisman, and Simone Biles running the show.
Someone I knew years ago, her daughter is at the top level, but they opted for the college route rather than the Olympics. For her sake, I’m so glad.
I fully agree they need a completely overhaul of everything. So many people turned a blind eye to this abuse. I can’t imagine the trauma these girls have dealt with, while at the same time expected to perform at the highest levels of a difficult, dangerous, grueling sport.
McKayla really has been through some tough stuff. I wish her peace and happiness.
Same. Someone I knew years ago had left the competitive ice skating circuit. She had put on tons of weight and wasn’t at all what you’d imagine a young ice skater to look like. In hindsight, I really wonder what was behind the rapid weight gain. I’m sure there were diet pills, disordered eating, tons of pressure to be skinny, all of which are abuse on their own, but now I wonder if there was also an element of not wanting to attract sexual attention from older men. (not that there’s any body type on a young woman that won’t attract unwanted attention from men, but I’m just wondering about the mindset of a young girl).
I worry about this one. She has done so much to her face and body. Yeah, it is her choice – I know….but after everything she has been through I find it concerning.
I can’t speak to any work she has or hasn’t done, but I worry about her and hope she is getting the emotional support she needs and is not being exploited by this “church”. It seems pretty dodgy and very culty to me. good article on it in the Daily Beast.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/olympian-mckayla-maroney-ensnared-in-scientology-like-mystery-cult-the-church-of-the-master-angels
I am not sure what you mean – what she has done to her face and body? She was a teenager when she competed. What? 2016 – she left competition for being injured. She grew up. No one looks the same as they do when they are young like that. Sure she dresses more sexy, and wears make-up, but she is 25 after all. Guess, I don’t see what you are referring to. This isn’t some Kardashian transformation here. And her body is in great shape because she still works out religiously – you can see that on her social media accounts.
She may have had something done, but that doesn’t make her a bad person. She does look a bit different, aging aside. Very few people who get work done look like a Kardashian, lol.
I find it strange that the possibility of plastic surgery is so upsetting to you — plastic surgery is neither good nor bad, it’s neutral, and the reasons for getting it and the environment someone gets it in are what can make it a “good” or “bad” thing.
I hope she finds peace and happiness. Very cute photo with President Obama. The horror those poor girls went through.
I just had an ad pop up three time on this post. This is happening all the time now. Is this necessary??
I’ve noticed this too! I appreciate the need for ad revenue but it’s very frustrating.
Even if they wanted to keep everything quiet and not turn him in- why not just quietly fire him? Why did they let him keep doing this?? I’ll never understand this
Because fundamentally, in the US, the only children people care about are their own, and girls still aren’t valued by our society. A monster of a doctor was more important to the powers that be at USAG than the health and safety of the girls who make the organization their money.
Simone said it best: “They had 1 damn job and that was to protect the athletes. the US women did their jobs. they won the world and Olympic medals. The governing bodies had 1 job to protect them and they didn’t do it.”
I am appalled by the FBI. Why in the world would they try to slow walk a case against this child molester? People should lose their jobs at the very least. Young women are completely disregarded by men in authority, FBI (I’m assuming men here) or the Spears judge for 13 years.
It’s also appalling that these young athletes were kept in the conditions they were kept in. Add too it how they were treated by their own government – the one they brought home medals for – it’s quite a bitter pill to swallow.
Im the age that the ’96 atlanta gymnastics team was a big deal for me as i was their age and in gymnastics myself. Dominique moceanu was on the team and wrote a book detailing the fat shaming their coaches did to them, like if they ever didn’t do something perfect it was blamed on them being fat
Those messages of control are so detrimental because people will use controlling their bodies as feeling like that will control the rest of their lives as well. These issues take so much time to heal and resolve if ever
I wonder if her father would be alive if it wasn’t for Nassar. He became addicted to prescription pills and tried to detox alone in a hotel and died. HIs family didn’t know, and if it wasn’t for the stress of this situation he might not have developed an addiction or feel like he couldn’t burden his family with it.
The bugs at the ranch thing is totally not surprising but insane to me. I could never sleep under those circumstances and then to have to preform death defying moves all day is crazy.
Athlete A on Netflix is a really fantastic but unnerving documentary. It’s absolutely infuriating to see how USA Gymnastics basically ignored these girls and gave this monster unfettered access to children AFTER hearing from gymnasts AND parents about this guy. It’s truly astonishing to me and all of these people need to be held accountable, civilly and criminally.