After Nassar scandal, gymnast says abuse warning signs were ignored again

Finley Weldon says the warning signs were missed twice, first in the shadow of Larry Nassar and then again while she was training at a prominent Iowa gymnastics academy. Her account puts USA Gymnastics and the sport’s abuse reporting system back under pressure, years after leaders promised sweeping change.

Weldon said in an interview that after athletes spoke out about Nassar, “it happened again” when she alleges her former coach sexually abused her as a child. The coach was later identified as Sean Gardner, who worked at Chow’s Gymnastics and Dance Institute in West Des Moines, Iowa, an academy long known for producing Olympians.

The allegations land at the center of a reform effort that was supposed to make repeat failures less likely. USA Gymnastics vowed to make changes after more than 150 women said they were sexually abused by Nassar, the former team doctor who pleaded guilty to molesting multiple young gymnasts. The U.S. Center for SafeSport opened in March 2017 to address and prevent abuse and misconduct in the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Movement, with the Nassar scandal as the clearest proof that the old system had failed.

Gardner was suspended from coaching in July 2022 after concerns were raised, and he was later arrested on federal child sexual exploitation and child pornography-related charges. By 2025, he was facing 12 felony counts of sexual exploitation of children in federal court in Mississippi. The case is a stark example of how allegations can move slowly through the institutions meant to stop them, even after a national reckoning over athlete safety.

The broader problem reaches beyond one coach or one gym. The Nassar case exposed how athletes could be silenced, ignored or delayed inside powerful organizations that controlled their training, careers and access to authorities. SafeSport was created to interrupt that pattern, yet the Weldon case shows how fragile those protections can be when reporting systems, oversight and coach supervision do not catch danger in time.

For USA Gymnastics, the question is no longer whether it promised change. It is whether the structures built after Nassar are working in practice, or whether athletes are still being left to prove the system failed only after the damage is done.