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Last week, FBI arrested gymnastics coach Sean Gardner, 38, on a federal child pornography tax. The arrest comes more than three years after he was suspended from coaching at Chow’s Gymnastics and Dance Institute in West Des Moines, Iowa, for alleged sexual abuse.
The Court Registers obtained by Associated Press Show Gardner were charged with sexual abuse of at least three young gymnasts at Chow’s and secretly recorded others who dressed in a gym at his former place of employment in Jump’in Gymnastics & Tumbling in Hattiesburg, Mississippi.
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This reservation photo provided by Des Moines, Iowa, Polk County Sheriff’s Office shows Sean Gardner on Thursday, August 14, 2025. (Polk County Sheriff’s Office via AP)
Chow’s is the gym where the American gymnast stars Shawn Johnson and Gabby Douglas train before becoming gold medals at the 2008 and 2012 Olympics.
Gardner told ABC-affected WOI-TV in 2019 that his position at Chow’s was the job he “has always wanted.”
“This is the job I have always wanted. Chow is really someone I’ve been looking up to since I’ve coached,” Gardner told the station. “And you can see when you step foot in the gym, just even from coaching the girls, the culture that he has built. It’s great. It’s beautiful.”
A year later, Gardner was promoted to Director of Chow’s Winter Classic, an annual meeting that draws more than 1,000 gymnasts to Iowa. He also coached a junior-OL team during his four-year period at Chow’s.
Several of his students won college gymnastics grants, but Gardner said he had greater goals.
“You will leave a thumbprint in their lives, so that when they hopefully go to school, to bigger and better things that they remember Chows as a family,” Gardner said in a 2020 interview with WOI-TV.
Pakinomist Digital has reached Chow’s Gymnastics and Dance Institute for Comment.
A girl reported to Safesport in March 2022 that Gardner used “inappropriate spotting techniques” where he would put his hands between her legs, the statement said.
Former Star Gymnast throwing US Gymnastics for Train
File – Gabby Douglas performs her floor routine while competing at the American Classic Gymnastics Meet, Saturday, April 27, 2024, in Katy, Texas. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)
It said she is alleged that Gardner would ask girls if they were sexually active and call them “idiots, ends and whore.” She said this behavior began after his employment in 2018 and continued until she left the gym by 2020. She delivered the names of six other potential victims.
In April 2024, another of Chow’s former athletes arrived at West Des Moine’s Police Department to report claims of abuse, according to a now-sealed statement signed by police detective Jeff Lyon.
Gardner is now detained in Polk County Prison in Des Moines and will be transported to Mississippi to meet the charge there, says a US Marshals Service spokesman.
Among the evidence seized by investigators in late May was a mobile phone, laptop and a desktop computer along with handwritten notes between Gardner and his former students, according to the sealed court documents.
They found pictures of girls, about 6 to 14 years naked, using the toilet or switching to leotards, these documents show. These pictures appear to have come from a hidden camera in a toilet.
Chow’s Gymnastics & Dance Institute will be seen August 4, 2025 in West des Moines, Iowa. (AP Photo/Scott McFetridge)
They also revealed 50 video files and 400 photos, including some that seemed to be child pornography, according to the FBI declaration. A video reportedly shows that Gardner enters the bathroom and turns off the camera.
Investigators also found pictures of an adult woman who was secretly filmed and left a bathtub, identifying her as Gardner’s ex-boyfriend. This woman as well as gymnastics owner, Candi Workman, told investigators that the pictures seemed to come from Jump’in Gymnastics’ facility in Purvis, Mississippi.
Gardner appeared in a des Moine court hall on Friday due to one case to produce visual depictions of minors participating in sexually explicit behavior that can carry up to 30 years in prison.
