Gymnastics coach faces federal child exploitation charges in Mississippi court

Sean Gardner returned to federal court in Mississippi on Monday facing 12 felony counts of sexual exploitation of children, a case that has become a test of whether American gymnastics ever truly fixed the blind spots exposed by the Larry Nassar scandal. Prosecutors said Gardner secretly placed a hidden camera in a bathroom at a gymnastics studio in Purvis between December 2017 and April 2018, recording minors in stages of undress and capturing close-up images of children’s anuses and genitals.

Gardner moved from Mississippi to Iowa in 2018 and landed at Chow’s Gymnastics and Dance Institute in West Des Moines, an elite academy known for training Olympic champions Shawn Johnson and Gabby Douglas. Liang “Chow” Qiao put him in charge of the club’s premier junior event and some of its most promising girls, and court records say at least three young gymnasts there later accused him of sexual abuse.

The case exposes how thin the sport’s safeguards remained after gymnastics promised reform. The U.S. Center for SafeSport, created in the wake of the Larry Nassar abuse scandal, suspended Gardner in 2022, but his disciplinary case stayed unresolved for years. SafeSport has defended temporary suspensions as a “unique and valuable intervention,” yet critics say the process can leave families in the dark while coaches continue to move through the system.

That gap mattered. Gardner was able to work in an Iowa hospital in 2024 helping care for surgical patients even after abuse allegations had already been reported to SafeSport and police. West Des Moines police searched his home in late May 2025 and recovered photos and videos of nude young girls from his computer and cellphone, deepening the evidence trail already building around his time in Iowa.

Investigators say the abuse was not limited to one gym. The FBI said Gardner primarily targeted children at gyms in Iowa and Mississippi, as well as at a third gym in Louisiana where he worked for 10 years until 2014. The FBI later created a victim-identification webpage and asked anyone victimized by Gardner to come forward. In April 2026, local reporting said Gardner intended to change his plea to guilty on three counts, with a hearing set for April 28 before his Mississippi court appearance. The case now stands as a measure of whether gymnastics’ promised reforms can stop predatory coaches before they keep reaching new children.