Iowa

A TEENAGER has been shot and killed in a tragic accident while squirrel hunting.

Carson Ryan, 17, was on a hunting trip when he was shot by a fellow hunter in Iowa on Saturday.

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The Washington teen was “mistaken for a squirrel by a member of his hunting party”, according to the Iowa Department of Natural Resources.

“[He was] struck in the back of the head”, a spokesperson said.

“Carson was transported to UI Health Care Medical Center, where he later died from his injuries,” the spokesperson added.

An investigation into the incident is ongoing.

Carson was in his final year at Washington High School and a player on the varsity football team.

In a tribute Facebook post, the Washington Boy’s Track and Field team said their “hearts are broken”.

“[We] ask you to keep Carson’s mom, family, classmates and teammates in your hearts as we navigate the devastating loss of Carson,” the post read.

A vigil was held for Carson on Saturday evening, hosted by the secondary school to honour their former pupil.

Assistant football coach Nic Williams said: “Carson was a fierce competitor in everything he did”.

“He loved fishing. He loved being with his friends. But more importantly, Carson was a person of incredible faith,” he said.

The heart breaking accident has added fuel to the fire of the ongoing debate surrounding gun laws and young people in the US.

Carson’s shock death comes as the New York Police Department revealed that a 13-year-old boy had been declared brain dead after being shot in the head on his way to school.

Just last week a mass shooting at a church in Michigan also claimed four lives and left eight survivors injured.

The gunman, Thomas Jacob Sanford, 40, ploughed his car into the church before unleashing gunfire on worshippers inside.

Sept. 30 (UPI) — Iowa formally revoked the license of the Des Moines schools superintendent who was picked up by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and switched his status from paid to unpaid leave.

The Des Moines Public School Board had placed Ian Roberts on paid administrative leave. Monday morning, it learned that the Iowa Board of Educational Examiners had revoked Roberts’ license to practice in the state, which meant that the local board had to put him on unpaid leave, retroactive to the state board’s decision, a press release said.

“New information and confirmed facts will continue to inform our decisions as we develop a path forward,” said Jackie Norris, chair of the Des Moines Public Schools Board. “Two things can be true at the same time – Dr. Roberts was an effective and well-respected leader and there are serious questions related to his citizenship and ability to legally perform his duties as superintendent.”

During a news conference later that day, attorney Alfredo Parrish said that Roberts had submitted his immediate resignation to the local school board, reported the Des Moines Register. Parrish said that Roberts, his client, does not want to be a distraction while he challenges efforts to deport him in court.

“He understands that he has the community’s support and it really gives him inspiration,” Parrish said. “His spirits are high.”

The Des Moines School Board is scheduled to discuss whether to terminate or accept Roberts’ resignation Tuesday evening.

Roberts was born in Guyana and came to the United States for college in 1999. He went on to get a Ph.D. and became a teacher and school administrator. He has worked in education for 20 years and had jobs in Maryland, Missouri, New York, Pennsylvania and Washington, D.C.

He was arrested on Friday “in possession of a loaded handgun, $3,000 in cash and a fixed blade hunting knife,” an ICE press release said. It said when his car was approached by officers, he sped away. “Roberts has existing weapon possession charges from Feb. 5, 2020. Roberts entered the United States in 1999 on a student visa and was given a final order of removal by an immigration judge in May of 2024.”

The school board has asked for clarification from Roberts’ attorney by Tuesday afternoon. The district said Roberts filled out an I-9 form, said he was a citizen and provided two forms of verification: a driver’s license and a Social Security card.

“It still seems baffling to me how someone could be hired and their status not be legal in that process,” the Rev. Robyn Bles, who has a child in the district, told the New York Times. “The case that is being presented to us doesn’t stand up to the fact that he has been hired and worked in multiple districts and multiple states. So what’s going on in all of those places?”

Des Moines attorney Alfredo Parrish, whose firm is representing Roberts, told CNN he had spoken with Roberts via phone and said they had a good conversation and he sounded well. He declined to say more.

The school district said it will continue to share updates on any decisions made with families, staff and the public as information becomes available.

DES MOINES — Officials put the leader of Iowa’s largest school district on administrative leave Saturday, a day after federal immigration agents arrested him because they said he was in the country illegally.

The Des Moines school board voted unanimously to place Supt. Ian Roberts on paid leave. The board said during a three-minute meeting that Roberts was not available to carry out his duties for the 30,000-student district and that officials would reassess his status after getting more information.

After the meeting, school board President Jackie Norris read a statement saying that word of Roberts’ arrest Friday made for a “jarring day,” but noting that board members still didn’t have all the facts.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said agents detained Roberts because he was in the country illegally, didn’t have authorization to work and was subject to a final removal order issued in 2024. ICE agents stopped Roberts while he was driving a school-issued vehicle, and the agency said he then fled into a wooded area before being apprehended with help from Iowa State Patrol officers.

He was held in the Woodbury County Jail in Sioux City, in northwest Iowa, about 150 miles from Des Moines.

“I want to be clear, no one here was aware of any citizenship or immigration issues that Dr. Roberts may have been facing,” Norris said. “The accusations ICE had made against Dr. Roberts are very serious, and we are taking them very seriously.”

Norris said Roberts has retained a Des Moines law firm to represent him. Lawyer Alfredo Parrish confirmed his firm was representing Roberts, but declined to comment on his case.

Norris also repeated that the district had done a background check on Roberts before he was hired that didn’t indicate any problems and that he signed a form affirming he was a U.S. citizen. A company that aided in the search for a superintendent in 2023 also hired another firm to conduct “comprehensive criminal, credit and background checks” on Roberts that didn’t indicate any citizenship problems, Norris said.

Also Saturday, the Iowa Department of Education released a statement saying Roberts stated he was a U.S. citizen when he applied for an administrator license. The department said the Iowa Board of Educational Examiners conducted a criminal history check with state and federal authorities before issuing a license.

The department said it is reviewing the Des Moines district’s hiring procedures for ensuring people are authorized to work in the U.S.

Roberts had previously said he was born to immigrant parents from Guyana and spent much of his childhood in Brooklyn, N.Y. He competed in the 2000 Olympics in track and field for Guyana.

ICE said he entered the U.S. on a student visa in 1999.

A former senior Guyanese police official on Saturday remembered Roberts as a middle-distance runner who could have risen through the ranks of the South American country’s police force had he not emigrated to the U.S. decades ago. Retired Assistant Guyana Police Force Commissioner Paul Slowe said Roberts entered the police force after graduating from the country’s standard military officers’ course.

“He served for a few years and then left. He was not dismissed or dishonorably discharged at all; he just moved on,” Slowe told the Associated Press. “He was a good, promising and disciplined man.”

McFetridge writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Bert Wilkinson in Georgetown, Guyana, contributed to this report.

DES MOINES, Iowa — U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst said Tuesday that she will not seek reelection next year, confirming in a video post on social media that she will retire after months of speculation about her plans.

Ernst’s departure opens up a Senate seat in the state known for its long-serving incumbents. Ernst was first elected in 2014 to the open seat previously held by Tom Harkin, a Democrat who served for 30 years. Republican Chuck Grassley, Iowa’s senior U.S. senator, was first elected to the Senate in 1980.

Her announcement Tuesday followed reports last week that she was expected to announce her retirement in September.

It is the second unexpected retirement for Senate Republicans as they work to maintain their majority in the chamber, with Ernst joining Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who turned down a reelection bid after clashing with President Trump.

It also could have ripple effects down the ballot if third-term Rep. Ashley Hinson from the Cedar Rapids area in eastern Iowa jumps into the race, as is widely expected. Hinson’s decision could also complicate House Republicans’ efforts to keep control as Democrats look for opportunities to flip seats in once-competitive Iowa, where two of Iowa’s four congressional districts have been among the country’s most competitive in recent elections.

Several Democrats are seeking the party’s nomination for the seat, including state Sen. Zach Wahls; state Rep. Josh Turek; Jackie Norris, chair of the Des Moines School Board; and Nathan Sage, a former chamber of commerce president.

Two Republicans — former state Sen. Jim Carlin and veteran Joshua Smith — had already entered the primary to challenge Ernst.

Ernst, Iowa’s first woman elected to Congress, is an Iraq War combat veteran and retired from the Army National Guard as a lieutenant colonel. She served for several years in Senate GOP leadership and was considered a vice presidential contender for Trump’s first White House run.

But Ernst has faced pressure from all sides in the last year. She took heat after signaling a hesitance to support one of Trump’s Cabinet picks. She’s also been one of the faces of Democrats’ campaign against the sprawling tax and spending package after she made a retort about Medicaid cuts at a town hall.

Fingerhut writes for the Associated Press.

DES MOINES, Iowa — U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst, an Iraq War combat veteran and Iowa’s first woman elected to Congress, is expected to announce next month she will not seek reelection, leaving another vacancy in an Iowa seat that could have ripple effects down the ballot as Democrats look to the state for pickup opportunities.

As Senate Republicans work to maintain their majority in the chamber, Ernst is joining a wave of her peers making headaches for the party. Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina turned down a reelection bid after clashing with President Trump.

Ernst plans to announce in September that she will opt out of the race for a third term, according to three people familiar with her plans who spoke Friday on the condition of anonymity to preview the announcement.

Ernst, a former Army National Guard member and a retired lieutenant colonel, was first elected to an open Senate seat in 2014. She served for several years in the No. 3 spot in the Senate GOP leadership and was considered a vice presidential contender for Trump’s first White House run.

Her decision comes after Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds, the state’s first female governor, said she would not run for reelection. It prompted the state’s many Republican elected officials to consider the open opportunity to run for higher office, a process that may begin again with Ernst’s departure.

Democrats have been looking for an opportunity to mount a political comeback in the once-competitive state, an uphill battle even in the potentially favorable midterm year. Ernst drew backlash after a retort about Medicaid cuts at a town hall. As Ernst explained that the legislation protects Medicaid for those who need it most, someone in the crowd yelled that people will die without coverage, and Ernst responded: “People are not … well, we all are going to die.”

The crowded primary field of Democratic candidates for the Senate have capitalized on that moment and Ernst’s Senate votes for early messaging. They’ll have to pivot once other Republicans enter the fray.

The election will be without an incumbent for the first time since 2014, when Ernst was elected in the first open Senate race in decades. Chuck Grassley, Iowa’s senior U.S. senator, has held his seat for 45 years.

Ernst emerged among a field of lesser-known candidates seeking the Republican nomination in 2014, rising to national recognition with advertisements that spoke of her experience slinging guns and castrating hogs. She won reelection in 2020 by more than six percentage points, coming in with just shy of 52% of voters.

Among Trump supporters, Ernst made waves earlier this year after signaling a hesitance to support his pick for the secretary of the Department of Defense, Pete Hegseth. Hegseth has said in the past that he did not think women should serve in combat roles, and he was accused of a sexual assault that he denies.

But Ernst, who is herself a survivor of sexual assault and has worked to improve how the military handles claims of misconduct, made clear she wanted to hear him respond to those points. It provoked a pressure campaign that underscored Trump’s power on Capitol Hill and included threats of a bruising primary.

It wasn’t the first time Ernst went toe to toe with Trump supporters. She also faced condemnation for her 2022 vote to protect same-sex marriage.

Still, Ernst would have benefited from nearly 200,000 more active voters registered as Republicans than Democrats, a significant shift from even a few years ago. Ernst announced a campaign manager in June, an October date for her annual fundraiser and had raised just shy of $1.8 million in the first half of the year.

Several Democrats are seeking the party’s nomination for the seat, including state Sen. Zach Wahls; state Rep. Josh Turek; Jackie Norris, chair of the Des Moines School Board; and Nathan Sage, a former chamber of commerce president.

Two Republicans — former state Sen. Jim Carlin and veteran Joshua Smith — had already entered the primary to challenge Ernst.

Kim, Fingerhut and Cappelletti write for the Associated Press. Kim and Cappelletti reported from Washington.

Aug. 26 (UPI) — Democrat Catelin Drey is on track to break the GOP supermajority in the Iowa state Senate by flipping a seat previously held by a Republican in a Tuesday special election.

Drey was leading with 55% of the vote to Republican Christopher Prosch’s 44%, according to the unofficial tally by the Woodbury County Auditor’s Office.

Her victory is the latest bright spot for Iowa Democrats ahead of the 2026 elections after seeing their clout in the once competitive state decline over the last decade. It also means that Republicans will lose their two-thirds majority in the chamber, forcing GOP Gov. Kim Reynold to get the support of at least one Democrat for her executive appointments.

Democrat Mike Zimmer won a surprise victory for an eastern Iowa Senate seat in a special election in January, reported the Des Moines Register. That followed a competitive showing for an Iowa House seat and a win for a Cedar Rapids-based House seat in the spring, the paper reported.

Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin hailed the results in a statement saying they were a sign that voters in the state were ready for a change

“They are putting Republicans on notice and making it crystal clear: any Republican pushing Trump’s unpopular, extreme agenda has no place governing on behalf of Iowa families,” he said.

However, Jeff Kaufmann, chair of the Iowa GOP, dismissed the results in a post on X.

“National Democrats were so desperate for a win that they activated 30,000 volunteers and a flood of national money to win a state Senate special election by a few hundred votes,” he wrote.

Drey, 37, works in marketing and lives in Sioux City with her husband and daughter, according to the Register.

“Overwhelmingly the main frustration point that I am hearing is that we have an affordability crisis, whether that’s housing, child care or healthcare,” Drey said. “And folks are really feeling that in their pocketbooks and in their spending decisions.”

The seat, which includes Sioux City, was previously held by Rocky De Witt who was re-elected in 2022 with nearly 10% of the vote and died in June.

On a tense, chaotic night, with the eyes of the nation trained on the Iowa caucuses, that state’s Democratic Party was counting on a new smartphone app to make everything go smoothly.

In 2016, for the first time, precinct chairs used a smartphone app built by Microsoft to relay results to party headquarters, enabling faster reporting than communicating via telephone hotline. This year, with the state party promising to disclose more granular data than in the past, the job of coding the app went to a fledgling tech firm run by veterans of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.

It turned out to be a crushing failure.

Throughout the long night, precinct chairs found themselves unable to get the app to work. Many never figured out how to download or install it in the first place. Those who tried to report their results via a backup phone line wound up on hold, sometimes for more than an hour.

After blaming the delay on “inconsistencies in the reporting of three sets of results,” it wasn’t until well into Tuesday afternoon that the Iowa Democratic Party was confident enough in the accuracy of its figures to begin releasing partial results, drawing complaints that the process had been rendered unfair — the front-running candidates robbed of their rightful momentum, the underperformers able to hide their weakness. And all because of an app that disrupted what it was meant to streamline.

The firm behind the app, Shadow Inc., took responsibility in a series of tweets Tuesday.

“We sincerely regret the delay in the reporting of the results of last night’s Iowa caucuses and the uncertainty it has caused to the candidates, their campaigns, and Democratic caucus-goers,” the company said, adding that “the underlying data and collection process via Shadow’s mobile caucus app was sound and accurate, but our process to transmit that caucus results data generated via the app to the [Iowa Democratic Party] was not.”

“We feel really terrible,” Shadow Chief Executive Gerard Niemira told Bloomberg in an interview Tuesday. He blamed the breakdown on a bug in the app’s code, which he said had been discovered and fixed by 10 p.m. But by then, the damage was done.

Shadow started out as Groundbase, a tech developer co-founded by Niemira and Krista Davis, who worked for the tech team on Clinton’s campaign for the 2016 Democratic nomination. In January 2019, it was acquired by ACRONYM, a Democratic nonprofit founded in 2017 “to educate, inspire, register, and mobilize voters,” according to its website. ACRONYM’s founder and CEO is Tara McGowan, a former journalist and digital producer with President Obama’s 2012 presidential campaign.

Niemira had previously worked at kiva.org, a San Francisco nonprofit that makes loans to entrepreneurs and others in the developing world, and Davis had spent eight years as an engineer at Google. Shadow’s chief operating officer, James Hickey, also worked in engineering for Clinton’s campaign.

“When a light is shining, Shadows are a constant companion,” its website says. “We see ourselves as building a long-term, side-by-side ‘Shadow’ of tech infrastructure to the Democratic Party and the progressive community at large.”

The company’s main products, according to its website, are a peer-to-peer messaging tool that helps campaigns send text messages to potential voters and a campaign data integration tool. Among Shadow’s larger clients is Pete Buttigieg’s presidential campaign, which paid $42,500 to the firm in July 2019 for “software rights and subscriptions,” according to public disclosures. A Buttigieg representative said that fee was for the text-messaging tool.

Federal Election Commission records also show payments to Shadow from the Texas Democratic Party, Democratic Party of Wisconsin and Joe Biden’s presidential campaign. Kirsten Gillibrand’s short-lived presidential campaign also paid the company for unspecified software and fundraising consulting.

In the days leading up to caucus night, Shadow’s app was seen as “a potential target for early election interference,” according to the Des Moines Register.

Those fears didn’t materialize, according to the Iowa Democratic Party. “This is simply a reporting issue, the app did not go down and this is not a hack or an intrusion,” communications director Mandy McClure said in a statement Monday night. “The underlying data and paper trail is sound and will simply take time to further report the results.”

But other warning signs before the caucus hinted at the problems ahead, said John Grennan, co-chairman of Iowa’s Poweshiek County Democratic Party. The lack of opportunities to train on the app in advance did not bode well, he said.

“We were supposed to be getting invitations to use it. The invites would never arrive,” he said. “A lot of people didn’t even load the app because it’s such a pain.”

When the big night came, Grennan, who was running the caucus site at Grinnell College, said he couldn’t tell whether the results he input transmitted properly.

“I kept getting kicked off,” Grennan said. He said he called the party’s hotline with a question, but gave up after nearly half an hour on hold. “I’m 90% sure it went through [on the app]. I’ll have to work under the assumption that if it’s not there, they’re going to call me.”

Ultimately, only one-quarter of precinct chairs were able to upload results successfully via the app, Bloomberg reported.

Shadow and its co-founders did not reply to emails seeking comment. ACRONYM appeared to distance itself from the company, describing itself late Monday as a hands-off investor and scrubbing mentions of the January acquisition and launch from its site.

The Iowa Democratic Party did not respond to questions about why it chose Shadow to build the caucus-reporting app.

Nevada’s Democratic Party planned to use Shadow’s app for its upcoming Feb. 22 caucus, but Chair William McCurdy II said Tuesday that his organization “will not be employing the same app or vendor used in the Iowa caucus. We had already developed a series of backups and redundant reporting systems, and are currently evaluating the best path forward.”

Shadow was reportedly cobbled together in two months, with the Iowa and Nevada state Democratic parties each paying around $60,000, a fee several civic tech experts called low.

It was not evaluated by the Department of Homeland Security, which offers free assistance to state and local election officials and authorities to help improve the cyber security of their election systems through the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which was established in 2018.

Rodrigo Bijou, a security researcher at Sensent, said a two-month development timeframe “sounds kind of insane, especially considering that user testing and a well-planned rollout would be critical for the app to succeed in a caucus format.”

This is not the first snafu the Iowa Democratic Party has run into this election cycle. The party planned to roll out for the first time “virtual caucuses” — a tool for voters who could not attend in person. The plan was dropped in August after the Democratic National Committee raised security concerns.

For a lower price, the party could have staffed phone banks instead of commissioning a mobile system, which is a “security nightmare,” said Douglas Jones, an associate professor of computer science at the University of Iowa, who has studied election security and also served as co-chair of a precinct in the Iowa caucuses four years ago. Telephoning in results works fine, he said, even if it’s slightly slower.

“It was low-tech but it was reliable” he said “[The app] doesn’t sound like it was cost-effective. I can buy a lot of temp workers and phone lines for $60,000.”

Marian K. Schneider, president of Verified Voting, a nonpartisan election integrity organization, pointed to a decidedly low-tech choice made in Iowa that might prove vital: tallying votes on paper as well.

“The chairs have the actual results recorded. They’re preserved and can be aggregated from those records. That’s a good thing,” Schneider said. “It’s OK that we take the time to get it right.”

Times staff writers Melanie Mason, Matt Pearce, Melissa Gomez and Sam Dean contributed to this report.

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.

DES MOINES — Iowa became the first state to remove gender identity from its civil rights code under a law that took effect Tuesday, meaning transgender and nonbinary residents are no longer protected from discrimination in their job, housing and other aspects of life.

The law also explicitly defines female and male based on reproductive organs at birth and removes the ability for people to change the sex designation on their birth certificate.

An unprecedented take-back of legal rights after nearly two decades in Iowa code leaves transgender, nonbinary and potentially even intersex Iowans more vulnerable now than they were before. It’s a governing doctrine now widely adopted by President Trump and Republican-led states despite the mainstream medical view that sex and gender are better understood as a spectrum than as an either-or definition.

When Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds signed Iowa’s new law, she said the state’s previous civil rights code “blurred the biological line between the sexes.”

“It’s common sense to acknowledge the obvious biological differences between men and women. In fact, it’s necessary to secure genuine equal protection for women and girls,” she said in a video statement.

Also taking effect Tuesday are provisions in the state’s health and human services budget that say Medicaid recipients are no longer covered for gender-affirming surgery or hormone therapy.

A national movement

Iowa’s state Capitol filled with protesters as the law went through the Republican-controlled Legislature and to Reynolds’ desk in just one week in February. Iowa Republicans said laws passed in recent years to restrict transgender students’ use of bathrooms and locker rooms, and their participation on sports teams, could not coexist with a civil rights code that includes gender identity protections.

About two dozen other states and the Trump administration have advanced restrictions on transgender people. Republicans say such laws and executive actions protect spaces for women, rejecting the idea that people can transition to another gender. Many face court challenges.

About two-thirds of U.S. adults believe that whether a person is a man or woman is determined by biological characteristics at birth, an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll conducted in May found. But there’s less consensus on policies that target transgender and nonbinary people.

Transgender people say those kinds of policies deny their existence and capitalize on prejudice for political gain.

In a major setback for transgender rights nationwide, the U.S. Supreme Court last month upheld Tennessee’s ban on puberty blockers and hormone treatments for transgender minors. The court’s conservative majority said it doesn’t violate the Constitution’s equal protection clause, which requires the government to treat similarly situated people the same.

Not every state includes gender identity in their civil rights code, but Iowa was the first to remove nondiscrimination protections based on gender identity, according to the Movement Advancement Project, an LGBTQ+ rights think tank.

Incidents of discrimination in Iowa, before and after July 1

Iowans will still have time to file a complaint with the state Office of Civil Rights about discrimination based on gender identity that occurred before the law took effect.

State law requires a complaint to be submitted within 300 days after the most recent incident of alleged discrimination. That means people have until April 27 to file a complaint about discrimination based on gender identity, according to Kristen Stiffler, the office’s executive director.

Sixty-five such complaints were filed and accepted for investigation from July 2023 through the end of June 2024, according to Stiffler. Forty-three were filed and accepted from July 1, 2024, through June 19 of this year.

Iowa state Rep. Aime Wichtendahl, a Democrat and the state’s first openly transgender lawmaker, fears the law will lead to an increase in discrimination for transgender Iowans.

“Anytime someone has to check your ID and they see that the gender marker doesn’t match the appearance, then that opens up hostility, discrimination as possibilities,” Wichtendahl said, naming examples such as applying for a job, going through the airport, buying beer or getting pulled over in a traffic stop. “That instantly outs you. That instantly puts you on the spot.”

About half of U.S. states include gender identity in their civil rights code to protect against discrimination in housing and public places, such as stores or restaurants, according to the Movement Advancement Project. Some additional states do not explicitly protect against such discrimination, but it is included in legal interpretations of statutes.

Five years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled LGBTQ+ people are protected by a landmark federal civil rights law that prohibits sex discrimination in the workplace. But Iowa’s Supreme Court has expressly rejected the argument that discrimination based on sex includes discrimination based on gender identity.

Changing Iowa birth certificates before the law took effect

The months between when the bill was signed into law and when it took effect gave transgender Iowans time to pursue amended birth certificates before that option was eliminated.

Keenan Crow, with LGBTQ+ advocacy group One Iowa, said the group has long co-sponsored legal clinics to assist with that process.

“The last one that we had was by far the biggest,” Crow said.

Iowa’s Department of Transportation still has a process by which people can change the gender designation on their license or identification card, but has proposed administrative rules to eliminate that option.

Wichtendahl also said she has talked to some families who are looking to move out of state as a result of the new law.

“It’s heartbreaking because this is people’s lives we’re talking about,” Wichtendahl added. “These are families that have trans loved ones and it’s keeping their loved ones away, it’s putting their loved ones into uncertain future, putting their health and safety at risk.”

Fingerhut writes for the Associated Press.