In a public letter Thursday to Minister Pascale St-Onge — and after four months of “sharing devastating stories” of years of abuse — Gymnasts for Changes, which represents 508 athletes, are repeating their calls for strict measures.
The letter comes a week after a coach in Lethbridge, Alta., was charged with sexually assaulting a seven-year-old girl. GymCan announced recently it had commission McLaren Global Sport Solutions to do a “culture review” of the sport’s national governing body. But the gymnasts have rejected the review, since it’s “bought and paid for by the very organization to be investigated.”
Thursday’s letter noted that GymCan and Sport Canada had been aware of potential for widespread maltreatment claims. GymCan CEO Ian Moss told Sport Canada’s director general Vicki Walker in August of 2020 — in a communication recently published by TSN — “there could, very soon, be a wave of historic athlete complaints.”
“According to this timeline, GymCan and Sport Canada have had knowledge of, and the opportunity to act on, suspected systemic abuse in gymnastics for at least two years and have done nothing, allowing abuse to continue against Canadian child athletes without intervention,” the letter said. “We had hoped for a better, more urgent response from you.
This is awful. As a parent of a 10 y/o hockey player, I see how much power coaches wield over not kids, but parents. Parents put little kids through hell and back to please coaches. It’s that modelling putting adolescents in these traps. Coaches are god. Parents needs to reflect.
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