Warning: This article contains graphic descriptions of sexual abuse.
IOWA CITY, Iowa — The U.S. gymnastics world was only just recovering from a devastating sexual abuse scandal when a promising young coach moved from Mississippi to Iowa to take a job in 2018 at an elite academy known for training Olympic champions.
Liang “Chow” Qiao, the owner of Chow’s Gymnastics and Dance Institute in West Des Moines, thought highly enough of his new hire, Sean Gardner, to put him in charge of the club’s premier junior event and to coach some of its most promising girls.
But four years later, Gardner was gone from Chow’s with little notice.
USA Gymnastics, the organization rocked by the Larry Nassar sex-abuse crisis that led to the creation of the U.S. Center for SafeSport, had been informed by the watchdog group that Gardner was suspended from all contact with gymnasts.
The reason for Gardner’s removal wasn’t disclosed. But court records obtained exclusively by the Associated Press show the coach was accused of sexually abusing at least three young gymnasts at Chow’s and secretly recording others undressing in a gym bathroom at his prior job in Mississippi.
Last week, more than three years after being suspended from coaching, the FBI arrested Gardner, 38, on a federal child pornography charge. But his disciplinary case has still not been resolved by SafeSport, which handles sex-abuse cases in Olympic sports.
In cases such as Gardner’s, the public can be in the dark for years while SafeSport investigates and sanctions coaches. SafeSport requires that allegations be reported to police to ensure abusers don’t run unchecked outside of sports, but critics say the system is a slow, murky process.
“From an outward operational view, it seems that if SafeSport is involved in any way, the situation turns glow-in-the-dark toxic,” said attorney Steve Silvey, a longtime SafeSport critic who has represented people in cases involving the center.
While acknowledging there can be delays as its investigations unfold, SafeSport defended its temporary suspensions in a statement as “a unique and valuable intervention” when there are concerns of a risk to others.
Nevertheless, in 2024, Gardner was able to land a job helping care for surgical patients at an Iowa hospital — two years after the abuse allegations against him were reported to SafeSport and the police.
And it was not until late May that West Des Moines police executed a search warrant at his home, eventually leading to the recovery of a trove of photos and videos on his computer and cellphone of nude young girls, court records show.
Authorities in Iowa sealed the court documents after the AP asked about the investigation earlier this month, before details of the federal charge were made public Friday. Gardner, Qiao and Gardner’s former employer in Mississippi did not respond to AP requests for comment.
‘The job that I’ve always wanted’
Chow’s Gymnastics is best known as the academy where U.S. gymnasts Shawn Johnson and Gabby Douglas trained before becoming gold medalists at the 2008 and 2012 Olympics.
Qiao opened the gym in 1998 after starring on the Chinese national team and moving to the United States to coach at the University of Iowa. The gym became a draw for top youth gymnasts, with some families moving to Iowa to train there.
Gardner moved to Iowa in September 2018, jumping at the opportunity to coach under Qiao.
“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 ABC affiliate WOI-TV in 2019. “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,” he said in a 2020 interview with WOI-TV.
Coach accused of sexual misconduct in Iowa and Mississippi
Gardner is accused of abusing his position at Chow’s and his former job at Jump’In Gymnastics in Mississippi to prey on girls under his tutelage, according to a nine-page FBI affidavit released Friday that summarizes the allegations against him.
A girl reported to SafeSport in March 2022 that Gardner used “inappropriate spotting techniques” in which he would put his hands between her legs and touch her vagina, the affidavit said.
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 and provided the names of six other potential victims.
SafeSport suspended Gardner in July 2022 — four months after the girl’s report — a provisional step it can take in severe cases with “sufficient evidentiary support” as investigations proceed.
A month after that, the center received a report from another girl alleging additional “sexual contact and physical abuse,” including that Gardner similarly fondled her during workouts, the FBI affidavit said. The girl said that he once dragged her across the carpet so hard that it burned her buttocks, the affidavit said.
SafeSport shared the reports with West Des Moines police, in line with its policy requiring adults who interact with youth athletes to disclose potential criminal cases to law enforcement.
While SafeSport’s suspension took Gardner out of gymnastics, the criminal investigation quickly hit a roadblock.
Police records show a detective told SafeSport to urge the alleged victims to file criminal complaints, but only one of their mothers contacted police in 2022. That woman said her daughter did not want to pursue criminal charges, and police suspended the investigation.
Victims of abuse are often reluctant to cooperate with police, said Ken Lang, a retired detective and associate professor of criminal justice at Milligan University.
“In this case you have the prestige of this facility,” he said. “Do they want to associate their name with that, in that way, when their aspirations were to succeed in gymnastics?”
Police suspended the investigation, even as Gardner was on probation for his second offense of driving while intoxicated.
A dormant case reopened, and a year later, an arrest
The case stayed dormant until April 2024 when another former Chow’s student 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. The AP is not identifying the student in line with its policy of not naming victims of alleged sexual abuse.
The now 18-year-old told police she began taking lessons from Gardner when she was 11 or 12 in 2019, initially seeing him as a “father figure” who tried to help her get through her parents’ divorce. He told her she could tell him “anything,” the affidavit said.
When she moved in 2021, she told police, he gave her a hug and said she could text and follow him on Instagram and other social media sites, where he went by the nickname “Coach Seanie,” because gym policy barring such contact no longer applied.
According to a summary of her statement provided in Lyon’s affidavit, she said Gardner fondled her during exercises, repeatedly touching her vagina; rubbed her back and butt and discussed his sex life; and made her do inappropriate stretches that exposed her privates.
She told police she suspected he used his cellphone to film her in that position.
Reached by the AP, the teen’s mother declined comment. The mother told police she was interested in a monetary settlement with Chow’s because the gym “had been made aware of the complaints and they did nothing to stop them,” according to Lyon’s affidavit. The gym didn’t return AP messages seeking comment.
It took 16 months after the teen’s 2024 report for the FBI to arrest Gardner, who made an initial court appearance in Des Moines 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. A public defender assigned to represent him didn’t return AP messages seeking comment.
It’s unclear why the case took so long to investigate and also when the FBI, which had to pay $138 million to Nassar’s victims for botching that investigation, got involved in the case.
Among evidence seized by investigators in late May were 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 in 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, Miss., which has since been closed.
SafeSport’s power has limits
SafeSport has long touted that it can deliver sanctions in cases where criminal charges are not pursued as key to its mission. However, Gardner’s ability to land a job in healthcare illustrates the limits of that power: It can ban people from sports but that sanction is not guaranteed to reach the general public.
While not commenting about Gardner’s case directly, it said in a statement provided to AP that a number of issues factor into why cases can take so long to close, including the 8,000 reports it receives a year with only around 30 full-time investigators. It has revamped some procedures, it said, in an attempt to become more efficient.
“While the Center is able and often does cooperate in law enforcement investigations,” it said, “law enforcement is not required to share information, updates, or even confirm an investigation is ongoing.”
USA Gymnastics president Li Li Leung called the center’s task “really tough, difficult to navigate.”
“I would like to see more consistency with their outcomes and sanctions,” Leung said. “I would like to see more standardization on things. I would like to see more communication, more transparency from their side.”
A case that lingers, even after the SafeSport ban
As the investigation proceeded, Gardner said on his Facebook page he had landed a new job in May 2024 as a surgical technologist at MercyOne West Des Moines Medical Center. It’s a role that calls for positioning patients on the operating room table, and assisting with procedures and post-surgery care.
Asked about Gardner’s employment, hospital spokesman Todd Mizener told the AP: “The only information I can provide is that he is no longer” at the hospital.
Meanwhile, the case lingers, leaving lives in limbo more than three years after the SafeSport Center and police first learned of it.
“SafeSport is now part of a larger problem rather than a solution, if it was ever a solution,” said attorney Silvey. “The most fundamental professional task such as coordination with local or federal law enforcement gets botched on a daily basis, hundreds of times a year now.”
Foley and Pells write for the Associated Press. AP reporter Will Graves contributed.
