McKayla Maroney Hoped Someone Would See Pain In Her Eyes (Watch)

LANSING, MI — An NBC News interview in which Olympic gold medal gymnast McKayla Maroney opened up about her experiences with sexual abuse aired on Sunday night. Maroney says Larry Nassar, the former doctor convicted of molesting young women and girls while a working for Michigan State University and USA Gymnastics, abused her hundreds of times.

Maroney says Nassar molested her when she first visited Karolyi ranch in Texas at the age of 13. He continued abusing her hundreds of times over the next half-decade, she said.

"He told me he was going to do a checkup on me and that was the first day I was abused," she told the outlet.

Maroney also says: "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."

Maroney told her story as part of a months-long Dateline investigation. The program ran for one hour on Sunday night on NBC. Dateline posts longer episodes on its website shortly after the program airs.

During the interview, Maroney describes what it was like after she was abused by Nassar in Tokyo seven years ago.

“I remember waking up the next day and wanting to tell someone — and hoping that someone would see it in my eyes that something really bad just happened to me, that they would ask me," she says.

She said she even told other gymnasts and USA Gymnastics coach John Geddert about the abuse in a blunt, matter-of-fact way.

"I just said, 'Last night, it was like Larry was fingering me,'" Maroney said. "I said this loud."

Geddert, who was suspended in January and did not respond to NBC News' requests for comment.

The program will also feature an interview with famed gymnastics coaches Bela and Martha Karolyi. Neither have spoken publicly since the abuse revelations broke more than a year and a half ago. NBC says new details — including an alleged cover-up attempt —will also be brought to light.

Karolyi ranch near New Waverly, Texas, is owned and operated by the Karolyis. It became the national training center for USA Gymnastics and the home to intense training for national and international events. The ranch has faced intense scrutiny after Nassar was sentenced to life in prison for sexually abusing nearly a hundred female athletes, most of them minors.

Olympian Aly Raisman and the mother of former world champion gymnast Maggie Nichols also talked during the program.

Nassar admitted in court he used his bare fingers to abuse his patients and told them it was medically necessary.

Maroney says Nassar molested her "every time" he saw her.

During Nassar's sentencing hearing in January, Ingham County Circuit Judge Rosemarie Aquilina said she was signing his "death warrant."

"It is my honor and privilege to sentence you," she said. "You do not deserve to walk outside a prison ever again. You have done nothing to control those urges and anywhere you walk, destruction will occur to those most vulnerable."

What he did to those women and girls were not medical treatments, she said.

"You did this for your pleasure and your control...I wouldn't send my dogs to you," said Aquilina.

Nassar has apologized to his victims, saying their testimony had "shaken" him to his core.

Photo credit: Dean Mouhtaropoulos/Getty Images