Gym owner says she reported grooming concerns about coach years before arrest in sex abuse case

IOWA CITY Iowa AP Long before his banishment from gymnastics and arrest after accusations he abused girls he coached warning signs about Sean Gardner were coming from several directions his former boss his gymnasts and their parents The former boss says she brought her concerns about Gardner s grooming behavior to USA Gymnastics the sport s national governing body The parents and girls described telling coaches of inappropriate behavior at Gardner s new job an academy that produced Olympians and is owned by renowned coach Liang Chow Qiao Yet Qiao not only kept Gardner on the job he promoted him Associated Press interviews with four parents whose daughters trained under Gardner and a letter obtained by the AP from Gardner s former employer to clients at her gym revealed that concerns about the coach were announced to gymnastics government as far back as four years before he was kicked out of the sport One girl informed Qiao during a meeting in that she had been touched inappropriately by Gardner during training but Qiao stated any such contact was inadvertent and intended to save athletes from injury a parent described AP She felt totally invalidated the parent reported of the response from Qiao who built his reputation coaching Olympic gold medalists Shawn Johnson and Gabby Douglas and China s women s national association The watchdog responsible for analyzing wrongdoing in Olympic sports approved to AP that Qiao and several other coaches were privately sanctioned for failing to assessment sexual misconduct claims against Gardner after learning about them Qiao did not return AP emails and phone messages seeking comment Gardner has been jailed since his Aug arrest pending federal court proceedings in Mississippi He hasn t entered a plea and court records don t indicate if he has a lawyer He did not return AP messages seeking comment before his arrest Concerns at Chow s Gymnastics were first raised in One parent recalled attending a meeting with the parents of two other girls with Qiao to discuss their daughters concerns including that Gardner was making them uncomfortable in the way he touched them while spotting and by talking about inappropriate subjects The parent like the others spoke to AP on condition of anonymity to protect their daughters The AP generally does not identify sexual abuse casualties The meeting came more than a year after Gardner s former employer at a gym in Purvis Mississippi Candi Workman explained she discussed concerns with a USA Gymnastics attorney about troubling behavior involving Gardner s coaching and grooming behavior Gardner was removed from the sport in July after the U S Center for SafeSport received a sexual abuse complaint and issued a temporary ban a move it called the only reason Gardner was barred from coaching young athletes until his arrest The center forwarded that information to Iowa police and it was another three years before the FBI arrested Gardner on charges of child sexual exploitation Among the majority of damning evidence were statements that he installed a hidden camera in the bathroom of the Mississippi gym to record girls as young as undressing Gardner s rise and the sport s inability to root him out came even as news of Larry Nassar s decades-long sexual abuse of gymnasts was in the headlines and gyms were implementing safeguards to better protect athletes It was the inability of USA Gymnastics and the U S Olympic Committee to police predators along with inaction by the FBI after learning of the abuse that led to SafeSport s founding in This is the same type of behavior where girls aren t maintained They are cast aside They are tamped down reported Megan Bonanni a lawyer who helped secure a million settlement for Nassar s casualties over the FBI s failures What we re seeing with Gardner it s multiple institutions failing to act with the urgency that child safety demands Local police SafeSport USA Gymnastics and this gym All of them Former boss says she broadcasted troubling behavior in In her first comments on the episode Workman the Mississippi gym owner stated gymnasts and their parents in a up-to-date letter that she disclosed troubling behavior by Gardner to then-USA Gymnastics lawyer Mark Busby in January Workman wrote that her concerns were related to grooming which USA Gymnastics defines as a process where a person builds trust and emotional connections with a child for the purpose of sexually abusing them Workman did not elaborate on what she disclosed and hasn t returned messages from AP seeking comment Busby whose job at the time related to athlete safety and is now in private practice declined to comment when reached by AP The SafeSport center disclosed it was notified by USA Gymnastics in January that one of its affiliated gyms had resolved a document involving Gardner But the center reported it didn t investigate further because the analysis was not related to sexual misconduct and it did not receive detailed information Despite that Gardner was able to leave Mississippi for a better job in another USA Gymnastics-affiliated facility Chow s Gymnastics and Dance Institute the West Des Moines Iowa gym that had become a mecca for top gymnasts Despite concerns at Chow s Gardner was promoted Chow s Gymnastics disclosed Gardner passed a standard USA Gymnastics background check when he was hired in Concerns about his behavior in the gym began soon after yet Gardner was consistently given more responsibility Girls in one training group pushed for other adults to intervene which resulted in the meeting between parents and Qiao But not long after that meeting Chow s Gymnastics promoted Gardner in January to head coach of a key girls club telling parents in an email obtained by AP He has demonstrated the leadership and put good effort to do his job well Gardner was also director of the Chow s Winter Classic a meet that draws hundreds of gymnasts to Iowa every year Chow s Gymnastics kept Gardner on the payroll after he was arrested in August for second-offense drunken driving a crash in which he ran another car off the road and his blood alcohol content recorded more than three times the legal limit for driving Gardner was sentenced to a week in jail and two years of probation In a comment Chow s Gymnastics stated it acted promptly responsibly and in full compliance after it received notice in April that Gardner was to be barred from one-on-one or unsupervised contact with athletes while SafeSport investigated unspecified misconduct Chow s Gymnastics mentioned that it enforced those measures and removed Gardner as head coach The gym announced it fired Gardner in July after SafeSport strengthened Gardner s restrictions to a temporary suspension from coaching and all contact with athletes Although there had been no finding of misconduct at that time Chow s Gymnastics chose to err on the side of protecting its athletes the message declared SafeSport revealed the sanctions in against Qiao and the other coaches who failed to analysis sexual misconduct claims included warnings required mentoring probation and suspension in one scenario The center does not normally comment about specific cases but announced in a message to AP that it has the ability to correct the record in light of the newest general letter issued by Chow s Gymnastics and Dance Institute Gym s claim of prompt response infuriates parents The gym s report infuriated certain parents and former Chow s pupils who announced concerns about Gardner had been widely known Several of Gardner s students left the gym beginning in in what parents called a mass exodus The parents of one gymnast recalled witnessing Gardner touch another girl s buttocks while standing behind her during practice Gardner reported the parents that his hand slipped by accident and the father recalled warning Gardner that there would be no accidents with my daughter When that girl eventually quit the gym due in part to Gardner s conduct the father recalled restraining himself when Gardner came out to the parking lot to say he was sorry Bonanni the attorney for survivors of Nassar s abuse mentioned she is troubled by the slow response in the Gardner development and expects more casualties to come forward The damage caused by this kind of abuse is permanent and it s really long-lasting she revealed It changes the trajectory of a young person s life