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Last week, the FBI arrested the gymnastics coach Sean Gardner, 38, on a federal accusation of juvenile pornography. The arrest comes for more than three years after being suspended from training at Chow’s Gymnastics and Dance Institute in West of the Monks, Iowa, for alleged sexual abuses.
The judicial files obtained by the Associated Press Show Gardner were accused of having sexually abused at least three young gymnasts in Chow’s and of secretly registering others undressing in a gymnasium bathroom in his previous workplace in Jump’In Gymnastics & Tumbling in Hattiesburg, Mississippi.
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This booking photo provided by the Sheriff’s office of the monks, Iowa, from Polk County shows Sean Gardner on Thursday, August 14, 2025. (Sheriff’s Bureau of Polk County via AP)
Chow’s is the gymnasium where American gymnast stars Shawn Johnson and Gabby Douglas formed before becoming gold medalists at the 2008 and 2012 Olympic Games.
Gardner told the Affilié Abc Woi-TV in 2019 that his post with Chow was the work he had “always wanted”.
“This is the work I have always wanted. Chow is really someone I have adopted since I was a coach,” Gardner told the station. “And you can say when you walk in the gymnasium, even by driving the girls, the culture he built. It’s incredible. It’s beautiful.”
A year later, Gardner was promoted to director of Chow’s Winter Classic, an annual competition that attracts more than 1,000 gymnasts to Iowa. He also trained a team from the Junior Olympic Games during his four -year term at Chow’s.
Several of his students obtained university gymnastics scholarships, but Gardner said he had greater objectives.
“You want to leave an imprint on their lives, so when they go, let’s hope, at school, to bigger and better things, that they remember Chow like a family,” said Gardner in an interview in 2020 with WOI-TV.
PK Press Club Digital contacted the Chow’s Gymnastics and Dance Institute for Comments.
A girl reported to Safesport in March 2022 that Gardner used “inappropriate tracking techniques” in which he would put his hands between his legs, said the Affidavit.
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File – Gabby Douglas performs its routine on the ground while competing in the classic American gymnastics competition, Saturday April 27, 2024, in Katy, Texas. (AP photo / David J. Phillip)
He said that she alleged that Gardner would ask the girls if they were sexually active and call them “idiots, sluts and whores”. She said that this behavior had started after hiring in 2018 and continued until she left the gymnasium in 2020. She provided the names of six other potential victims.
In April 2024, another of the former Chow athletes presented themselves to the West Police Service of the Monks to report allegations of abuse, according to an affidavit now sealed signed by the police detective Jeff Lyon.
Gardner is now detained in Polk County prison to monks and will be transported to Mississippi to face it, said a spokesperson for US Marshals Service.
According to Selped Selped documents, the evidence entered by investigators at the end of May, a laptop and a desktop computer as well as handwritten notes between Gardner and his former students.
They found images of girls, about 6 to 14 years old, which were naked, using the toilets or turning into leotards, these documents show. These images seem to come from a hidden camera in the toilet.
The Chow’s Gymnastics & Dance Institute is seen on August 4, 2025 in West of the Monks, Iowa. (Photo / scott mcfetridge)
They also discovered 50 video files and 400 photos, some of which seemed to be juvenile pornography, according to the Affidavit of the FBI. A video will show that Gardner is entering the bathroom and turning off the camera.
Investigators also found images of an adult woman filmed when entering and leaving a bathtub, and identified her as the ex-Gardner friend. This woman, as well as the owner of the gymnasium, Candi Workman, told investigators that the images seemed to come from the installation of Jump’in Gymnastics in Purvis, Mississippi.
Gardner appeared on Friday in a hearing hall of monks on an accusation of production of visual representations of minors engaging in sexually explicit driving, which can bring up to 30 years in prison.
