Gymnast who sparked abuse inquiry into coach at elite US academy says she ‘needed to speak out’

IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) — Recalling the damage her now-arrested coach inflicted on her and many of her gymnast friends, Finley Weldon said she feels a sense of pride.

Free from the grip that Sean Gardner had during her years of training at an Iowa academy known for producing Olympians, Weldon told The Associated Press in an exclusive interview that she is among the few who survived his abuse and are still in the sport.

The 18-year-old is heading into her freshman year at Iowa State University, where she’ll be a member of the Cyclones gymnastics team. She spoke with the AP on Wednesday, less than a week after Gardner was arrested on a child sexual exploitation charge.

“I didn’t want him to take away anything from me, especially something that I love,” she said. “None of the girls that I started with or went through the things that I did with Sean are still doing gymnastics today. So that’s something I’m very proud of.”

She’s also happy she’s made a difference, in the same way gymnasts she admires — like Aly Raisman, an Olympian whose visceral accounts of abuse by Larry Nassar shined a spotlight on the trauma gymnasts went through and how authorities failed to curb it.

The AP generally does not identify victims of sexual abuse, but Weldon said she wanted “my name out there because I was the one who did come forward.”

“I felt like I needed to speak out to stop it from happening to other little girls, so they didn’t have to go through what I went through,” Weldon said.

“I knew it would just be a continuous cycle if nobody did.”

Gymnasts reported abuse to watchdog in 2022

The FBI said Tuesday it believes Gardner “targeted children” while coaching at Chow’s Gymnastics and Dance Institute in West Des Moines, and gyms in Mississippi and Louisiana where he worked dating back to 2004.

Gardner, 38, didn’t return AP messages left on his cellphone before his arrest, and has not entered a plea to the charge. A public defender who represented him after his arrest hasn’t returned messages.

Another former gymnast at Chow’s, the academy known for producing Olympic gold medalists Shawn Johnson and Gabby Douglas, first reported sexual abuse allegations against Gardner to the U.S. Center for SafeSport in March 2022, alleging he fondled her during training sessions, according to an FBI affidavit.

That girl provided the names of six other of Gardner’s potential victims, according to the affidavit. Weldon said she spoke with a SafeSport investigator about her abuse at the time.

SafeSport, a watchdog created after the Nassar scandal to investigate misconduct complaints, informed the West Des Moines Police Department about the allegations. It suspended Gardner from coaching or having contact with any gymnasts in July 2022.

The police department said its investigation was closed in 2022 when the initial accuser decided she did not want to pursue charges.

Weldon said police never reached out to her in 2022 but she’s unsure whether she would have wanted to press charges then. She said she came forward in April 2024 at age 16 after she matured and began to realize the severity of her abuse.

She praised police for doing “an amazing job” keeping her informed about the progress of the case.

“It’s definitely taken awhile, but I mean, even I didn’t realize how many steps there would be to charge him with anything,” she said.

Police defend investigative efforts

Iowa investigators say they searched Gardner’s home in May and seized electronic devices that contained images of nude girls from a hidden camera Gardner placed in the bathroom of a Purvis, Mississippi, gym where he previously worked.

West Des Moines Police Sgt. Daniel Wade said Wednesday the department sought the FBI’s assistance in mid-July when the case’s “scope started to broaden.” Asked why the department didn’t involve FBI sooner, he said, “We call the FBI when the time is right.”

Gardner is charged in federal court in Mississippi with producing visual depictions of minors engaging in sexually explicit conduct related to the alleged hidden camera. Federal and state investigations remain active, and additional charges are possible.

Wade defended the department’s investigative efforts over the last three years. He said investigators “went as far with it as we could” in 2022, without a victim seeking charges and have been conducting a thorough investigation since receiving the new complaint in 2024.

Wade declined comment on whether investigators reached out to Weldon and other potential victims identified in 2022, saying only that police opened “lines of communication with different people” that later paid off.

Weldon said she met with investigators Tuesday and they asked her to identify herself in an image Gardner allegedly secretly took of her in a vulnerable stretching position.

Protecting the ‘male figure in my life’

Weldon said her goal since she was a girl was to reach the elite level in the USA Gymnastics Junior Olympic program for those who aim to compete internationally.

She said she started training at Chow’s after her family moved to Iowa in 2015. She began taking private lessons with Gardner two or three times per week shortly after he joined Chow’s in September 2018, when she 11 years old.

Weldon said she was struggling as her parents went through a divorce and her father was largely absent from her life. She said Gardner sought to fill that role by telling her she could tell him “anything” and that he would always be there for her.

In hindsight, she said he was manipulating her in order to gain her trust.

Finley’s mother, Julie Weldon, said she heard concerns about Gardner from other parents at Chow’s early on and asked her daughter whether her coach had ever done anything inappropriate. Finley said she falsely told her mother no because she was protecting the “male figure in my life.”

Inappropriate behavior progressed

She said Gardner began touching her inappropriately in 2019 during lessons, beginning with long hugs and pats on the back. She said his behavior progressed, and he began touching her butt during the hugs and requiring her to stretch for extended periods in positions that exposed her vagina and anus out of her leotard.

She said around 2020 he began touching her vagina while spotting her during exercises. She recalled once telling him not to put his hands there and he claimed it was an accident because her “leotard was slippery.”

Weldon recalled reaching her breaking point with Gardner after a 2021 training in which he yelled and threw shoes at her, telling her she’d never reach elite status. She said she walked out and told her mom she wanted to quit.

She said many of her classmates quit or didn’t return because of Gardner’s conduct after the gym shut down during the pandemic. But while he made her hate gymnastics at times, she continued training when her family moved to Texas and then to Utah. She said she eventually proved Gardner wrong by earning elite status and a spot on a Division 1 team.

After news of Gardner’s arrest, Weldon saw his jail booking photo in the AP story. She said she was struck by how much heavier and unkempt he appeared.

“He’s definitely like gone through a spiral,” she said. “I think he probably just had so much guilt built up in him that he kind of turned into that.”