McKayla Maroney has ended her absence from social media. Maroney hopped back on Instagram and Twitter with her first post.
She captioned it:
missed u guys ☁️ last few years a lots happened w the #MeToo movement, and losing my dad very unexpectedly..
i’ll definitely talk about it more, but for now i’ll just say that even on the worst days, i knew i had so much to be thankful for. i have the most supportive family, and friends, and u guys are part of that.
blessed to have u, and happy to be back 👼
She’s definitely had a rough year. Her dad died this past January. At the time, she tweeted out:
Love u dad. I can’t believe it’s real. I don’t want to. I’ll miss you forever. Rest in peace. You were the most incredible dad
Then there was the gymnastics sex scandal with pedophile Larry Nassar. Maroney gave an interview to NBC News and detailed how Nassar’s “invasive” exams were just excuses to finger her when she was 15.
Nassar, she said, had given her a sleeping aid on the long-haul flight to Japan for the world championships. By the time she got to his hotel room that night, she wasn’t feeling like herself.
She wasn’t alone with the doctor — at first. Maroney says two-time Olympian Aly Raisman was getting worked on, Jordyn Wieber had her foot in an ice bath, and a trainer was fighting off sleep.
One by one, Nassar dismissed them until only Maroney, then 15 years old and not yet an Olympic champion, was left.
“And then I got worked on,” she said.
“[It] was very, very hard for me not to acknowledge the fact that … this was not treatment. I was being abused,” she said. “I was bawling, naked on a bed, him on top of me, like fingering me.
That is a rough year. A parent’s death, reliving sexual abuse, I guess it would be callous for me to put up all her booty and cleavage shots from Instagram now, won’t it. Ok, maybe one.
Welcome back McKayla.