FBI arrests US gymnastics academy coach accused of sexually abusing young girls on child porn charges

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Last week the FBI arrested gymnastics coach Sean Gardner, 38, on a federal child pornography charge. 

The arrest comes more than three years after he was suspended from coaching at Chow’s Gymnastics and Dance Institute in West Des Moines, Iowa, for alleged sexual abuse.

Court records obtained by The Associated Press show Gardner was accused of sexually abusing at least three young gymnasts at Chow’s and secretly recording others undressing in a gym bathroom at his previous place of employment at Jump’In Gymnastics & Tumbling in Hattiesburg, Mississippi.

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Chow’s is the gym where U.S. gymnastics stars Shawn Johnson and Gabby Douglas trained before becoming gold medalists at the 2008 and 2012 Olympics.

Gardner told the ABC affiliate WOI-TV in 2019 that his position at Chow’s was the job he’s “always wanted.” 

“This is the job that I’ve always wanted. Chow is really someone I have looked up to since I’ve been coaching,” Gardner told the station. “And you can tell when you step foot in the gym, just even from coaching the girls, the culture that he’s built. It’s amazing. It’s beautiful.”

A year later, Gardner was promoted to director of Chow’s Winter Classic, an annual meet that draws more than 1,000 gymnasts to Iowa. He also coached a junior Olympics team during his four-year tenure at Chow’s.

Several of his students earned college gymnastics scholarships, but Gardner said he had bigger goals.

“You want to leave a thumbprint on their life, so when they go off, hopefully to school, to bigger and better things, that they remember Chow’s as family,” Gardner said in a 2020 interview with WOI-TV.

Fox News Digital has reached out to Chow’s Gymnastics and Dance Institute for comment. 

A girl reported to SafeSport in March 2022 that Gardner used “inappropriate spotting techniques” in which he would put his hands between her legs, the affidavit said.

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It said she alleged Gardner would ask girls if they were sexually active and call them “idiots, sluts, and whores.” She said this behavior began after his hiring in 2018 and continued until she left the gym in 2020. She provided the names of six other potential victims.

In April 2024, another of Chow’s former athletes came forward to the West Des Moines Police Department to report abuse allegations, according to a now-sealed affidavit signed by police detective Jeff Lyon.

Gardner is being detained at the Polk County Jail in Des Moines and will be transported to Mississippi to face the charge there, a spokesperson for the U.S. Marshals Service said.

Among the evidence seized by investigators in late May was a cellphone, laptop and a desktop computer along with handwritten notes between Gardner and his former pupils, according to the sealed court documents.

They found images of girls, approximately 6 to 14 years of age, who were nude, using the toilet or changing into leotards, those documents show. Those images appear to have come from a hidden camera in a restroom.

They also uncovered 50 video files and 400 photos, including some that appeared to be child pornography, according to the FBI affidavit. One video allegedly shows Gardner entering the bathroom and turning off the camera.

Investigators also found images of an adult woman secretly filmed entering and exiting a bathtub and identified her as Gardner’s ex-girlfriend. That woman, as well as the gym’s owner, Candi Workman, told investigators the images appeared to come from Jump’In Gymnastics’ facility in Purvis, Mississippi. 

Gardner appeared in a Des Moines courtroom on Friday on a charge of producing visual depictions of minors engaging in sexually explicit conduct, which can carry up to 30 years in prison. 

The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

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