Gym owner says she reported grooming concerns about coach years before
arrest in sex abuse case
[August 30, 2025]
By RYAN J. FOLEY and EDDIE PELLS
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 reported to gymnastics authorities as far back as 2018 — four years
before he was kicked out of the sport.
One girl told Qiao during a meeting in 2020 that she had been touched
inappropriately by Gardner during training but Qiao said any such
contact was inadvertent and intended to save athletes from injury, a
parent told AP.
“She felt totally invalidated,” the parent said of the response from
Qiao, who built his reputation coaching Olympic gold medalists Shawn
Johnson and Gabby Douglas and China's women's national team.
The watchdog responsible for investigating wrongdoing in Olympic sports
confirmed to AP that Qiao and several other coaches were privately
sanctioned for failing to report sexual misconduct allegations against
Gardner after learning about them.
Qiao did not return AP emails and phone messages seeking comment.
Gardner, 38, has been jailed since his Aug. 14 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 2019
One parent recalled attending a 2019 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
victims.
The meeting came more than a year after Gardner's former employer at a
gym in Purvis, Mississippi, Candi Workman, said 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 2022 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 most damning evidence were allegations that he
installed a hidden camera in the bathroom of the Mississippi gym to
record girls as young as 6 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 2017.
“This is the same type of behavior where girls aren't believed. They are
cast aside. They are tamped down,” said Megan Bonanni, a lawyer who
helped secure a $138.7 million settlement for Nassar's victims 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 reported ‘troubling behavior’ in 2018
In her first comments on the case, Workman, the Mississippi gym owner,
told gymnasts and their parents in a recent letter that she reported
“troubling behavior” by Gardner to then-USA Gymnastics lawyer Mark Busby
in January 2018.
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.
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The Chow's Gymnastics & Dance Institute is seen Aug. 4, 2025, in
West Des Moines, Iowa. (AP Photo/Scott McFetridge)
Workman did not elaborate on what she reported 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 said it was notified by USA Gymnastics in
January 2018 that one of its affiliated gyms had resolved a report
involving Gardner. But the center said it didn't investigate further
because the report 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 said Gardner passed a standard USA Gymnastics
background check when he was hired in 2018.
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
2019 meeting between parents and Qiao.
But not long after that meeting, Chow’s Gymnastics promoted Gardner
in January 2020 to head coach of a key girls' team, 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 2021 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 statement, Chow’s Gymnastics said it acted “promptly,
responsibly and in full compliance” after it received notice in
April 2022 that Gardner was to be barred from one-on-one or
unsupervised contact with athletes while SafeSport investigated
unspecified misconduct.
Chow’s Gymnastics said that it enforced those measures and removed
Gardner as head coach. The gym said it fired Gardner in July 2022
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 statement said.
SafeSport said the sanctions in 2022 against Qiao and the other
coaches who failed to report sexual misconduct allegations included
warnings, required education, probation, and suspension in one case.
The center does not normally comment about specific cases but said
in a statement to AP that it has “the ability to correct the record
in light of the recent public letter issued by Chow’s Gymnastics and
Dance Institute.”
Gym's claim of prompt response infuriates parents
The gym's statement infuriated some parents and former Chow’s pupils
who said concerns about Gardner had been widely known. Several of
Gardner’s students left the gym beginning in 2019 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
told 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, said she is
troubled by the slow response in the Gardner case and expects more
victims to come forward.
“The damage caused by this kind of abuse is permanent, and it’s
really long-lasting,” she said. “It changes the trajectory of a
young person’s life.”
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Pells reported from Denver.
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