USA Gymnastics paid to keep Maroney quiet

Olympic gymnast McKayla Maroney claims in a federal lawsuit filed on Wednesday that USA Gymnastics tried to prevent her from publicly accusing former team doctor Larry Nassar of sexual abuse.

The lawsuit, which was filed in Los Angeles Superior Court and obtained by USA TODAY Sports, alleges that Maroney was forced to sign a confidentiality agreement as part of a financial settlement that she needed to pay for psychological treatment.

The suit claims that USA Gymnastics “had a plan to keep the sexual abuse of Nassar quiet, and allow Nassar to quietly leave USAG; further silencing his victims.”

“The U.S. Olympic Committee and USA Gymnastics were well aware that the victim of child sexual abuse in California cannot be forced to sign a nondisclosure agreement as a condition of a settlement,” Maroney’s lawyer, John Manly, told The Indianapolis Star, which is part of the USA TODAY NETWORK. “Such agreements are illegal for very good reasons, they silence victims and allow perpetrators to continue committing their crimes. That is exactly what happened in this case.”

USA Gymnastics did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the newspaper.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Maroney’s settlement was worth $1.25 million.

While Manly told ESPN that his client willingly signed the settlement, he also said she was emotionally traumatized at the time by news that other gymnasts had suffered similar abuse. Maroney needed the money to pay for “lifesaving psychological treatment and care,” which coerced and pressured her into signing the confidentiality agreement, according to the lawsuit.

Maroney, an Olympic gold medalist, violated that agreement when she revealed on Twitter in October that she had been sexually abused by Nassar, who was sentenced to 60 years in federal prison earlier this month after pleading guilty to child pornography charges. The 22-year-old spoke out about the abuse using the hashtag #MeToo.

“I had a dream to go to the Olympics, and the things that I had to endure to get there were unnecessary and disgusting,” Maroney wrote.

USA Gymnastics subsequently released a statement that said, in part, that it “admires the courage of those, like McKayla Maroney, who have come forward to share their personal experiences with sexual abuse.”

The lawsuit filed Wednesday points to this statement, and a social-media post from the organization on Maroney’s birthday, as proof of an attempt at misdirection.

“(USA Gymnastics) publicly discussed the exact same subject matter it sought to conceal, only months prior, presumably, to divert the public from USAG’s misdeeds and associate itself with disclosure by McKayla Maroney, which it clearly tried to prevent with this unlawful agreement,” the lawsuit says.

The lawsuit also lists the U.S. Olympic Committee, Nassar and Michigan State University, where Nassar was employed, as defendants.