Flurry of change afoot in wake of sexual abuse

ANAHEIM, Calif. — On the floor of the Honda Center, the USA Gymnastics championships are imbued with a sense of normalcy and routine.

Of tumbling runs and coaching tweaks. Of blaring music and chalk dust. Of leaps and leotards. Of the search for who’s next.

There is no sign of an organization in crisis trying to finds its way following a stormy year that has seen one of the U.S. Olympic movement’s marquee brands shaken from the head of its national office in Indianapolis down to the smallest of its 3,546 member clubs.

To find the fallout from allegations of sexual abuse against a longtime former national team doctor and a subsequent independent review that called for significant changes in the manner in which USA Gymnastics protects its athletes, you need to pull back.

While the women’s field went through final preparations Thursday for Friday night’s opening round of competition, in a hotel conference room across the street Olympic bronze medalist Jamie Dantzscher and national team member Rachael Denhollander called for several members of the USA Gymnastics Board of Directors to resign, insisting the organization needs to make a clean break from its past before it can begin moving forward.

Golden glow gone

“A complete change in USAG leadership is needed starting at the top,” said Dantzscher, who won a team bronze medal at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney.

In a convention center a few miles away, hundreds of gym operators and coaches tried to figure out how to best implement the guidelines outlined by Deborah Daniels, a former federal prosecutor who made 70 recommendations in June — all immediately adopted — designed to provide athletes, their parents and coaches better safeguards and greater recourse against accused abusers.

In Michigan, Larry Nassar — who spent nearly 30 years working as an osteopath for USA Gymnastics’ elite athletes — sat in prison after pleading guilty to three child pornography charges. Nassar is awaiting trial on nearly two dozen other charges while also facing more than 100 civil lawsuits claiming he abused female athletes during his tenure at USA Gymnastics and Michigan State. Many are in mediation and four cases in California are tied up in the courts.

The golden glow from the Final Five’s medalhogging performance in Rio de Janeiro faded quickly. While Simone Biles, Gabby Douglas, Aly Raisman, Madison Kocian and Laurie Hernandez have spent the past 12 months enjoying their newfound celebrity, USA Gymnastics has spent its time playing defense and figuring out where to go next after being named as a co-defendant in multiple civil cases filed against Nassar.

More careful now

Longtime women’s national team coordinator Martha Karolyi — who along with husband, Bela, has been named a codefendant in some of the lawsuits — retired shortly after returning from Rio. The organization recently pulled out of a deal to purchase the Karolyi Ranch, which has served as the de facto home of the women’s program for nearly two decades.

Steve Penny was forced out as president and chief executive officer in March for mishandling a number of abuse cases. A replacement for Penny will likely be named by September; Valeri Liukin took over for Karolyi last fall, tasked with continuing the women’s programs’ dominance while creating a more transparent culture.

“It adds a lot of stress, but guess what, we have a lot of great people in the country, a lot of great people,” Liukin said. “Having one bad person doesn’t mean that it’s going to affect the program. We are more careful right now. We take steps to prevent (abuse) from happening.”

Less than two months removed from Daniels’ report, there are signs of progress. National team members who fly into Houston for training camps must be escorted to the camp with at least two other people along for the ride to avoid any oneon-one interaction. Underage female gymnasts with male coaches who are picked to compete internationally must travel with a credentialed female chaperone. One-on-one visits to cabins the athletes use during overnight stays by medical staff is prohibited.

“They need to know that their safety is our utmost priority,” said senior vice president of the women’s program Rhonda Faehn. “We need to make sure that they know that and that they feel it.”

Policing at local level

That’s at the national level. Policing at a local level is another matter entirely. Denhollander came forward as part of an investigation by the Indianapolis Star that discovered USA Gymnastics collected complaints of improper conduct by over 50 coaches between 1996 and 2006 and regularly declined to forward them to the authorities unless expressly asked to do so.

Many member clubs have adopted some of the recommended policies on their own.