Abusive coaches slip through cracks
Measures designed to protect young Canadian athletes need to be strengthened, critics say
Chad Meikle bounced around among five different Toronto-area gymnastics clubs over his decade as a coach.
According to court documents he was also a diagnosed pedophile, and maintained a blog in which he called himself “Pedo-Coach.” Meikle blogged about his sexual attraction to young girls, and offered advice to other pedophiles.
Yet he managed to seemingly raise no alarm bells within the gymnastics community until his arrest in 2006, when he counselled an undercover Toronto police officer on how to sexually abuse his (fictitious) eight-year-old daughter, in an online conversation that lasted nearly two hours. When police searched the 33-year-old’s house, they found young girls’ underwear, allegedly taken from a gymnastics club, plus dozens of child pornography videos and photos.
More than a decade later, hundreds of gymnasts have been calling on the federal government for an investigation into their sport, as abusive coaches continue to slip through the cracks.
“We have a problem in gymnastics whereby emotional, verbal, psychological abuse leaves kids vulnerable to other forms of abuse and toxic relationships,” said Kim Shore, a former gymnast, the mother of a former gymnast and a former Gymnastics Canada board member. “(And here was) a coach actively educating would-be criminals on how to be predators on kids who are already vulnerable because of the toxic culture of gymnastics. That’s terrifying.”
Shore is among more than 500 former and current gymnasts — they call themselves Gymnasts for Change — who’ve been passionately lobbying the federal government to help clean up their sport. Meanwhile, the allegations continue.
Since Jamie Ellacott, a 33-yearold gymnastics coach in Lethbridge, was charged in July with sexually assaulting a seven-yearold girl at his gym, three more girls aged 10, 12 and 14 have since come forward. Investigators say the girls were assaulted in May. None of the allegations have been proven in court. The Lethbridge Gymnastics Academy has permanently closed.
“It’s so upsetting,” said retired gymnast Abby Spadafora. “We know there is an endemic of child abuse in Canadian gymnastics right now. Why is it not being taken more seriously?”
In a public letter in May, Spadafora detailed her own allegations of years of sexual, emotional and physical abuse in the 1990s by coaches Dave and Elizabeth Brubaker. Dave Brubaker was suspended from Gymnastics Canada (GymCan) for life, while Elizabeth is serving a five-year suspension. Dave Brubaker was found not guilty in court, and the couple has denied all allegations.
GymCan and provincial organizations require police checks for coaches. Suspended coaches are listed on GymCan’s website, although Meikle isn’t among the 27 names. Many provincial organizations also post lists of suspended coaches online.
“(But) once the suspension is done, it goes off the list,” Spadafora pointed out.
She said she knows of proven abuse or allegations involving close to two dozen Canadian coaches since she competed. One was Claude Aubertin, a board member for Gymnastics Canada, Gymnastique Quebec and the 2017 world championships in Montreal. Aubertin was charged in 2016 with possessing, distributing and consuming child pornography. He’d served a sentence on child prostitution charges in 1992.
While GymCan said at the time it had been unaware of Aubertin’s previous charges, experts say police checks aren’t always effective.
“When we talk about a lot of the things that are happening in sport, they probably wouldn’t reach the criminal threshold,” said Erin Willson, president of AthletesCAN, which represents Canadian athletes, and an Olympian in artistic swimming.
Discredited coaches often migrate from one club, city, province or even country to another. Some switch sports.
“We’ve seen what happened in the United States (the Larry Nassar sex abuse scandal),” said Conservative MP Karen Vecchio, the shadow Minister for Women and Gender Equality and Youth and chair of the Standing Committee on the Status of Women. “We have to ensure that each and every individual is there for the right reasons … and no ‘three strikes you’re out.’ One strike, you’re gone.”
The U.S. Center for Safe Sport USA has a database that lists every coach who’s broken its code of conduct. Other countries, Willson said, have repositories that, while not public, can provide background information.
“The amount of times that a coach is let go at a certain place (and) pops up in another place is far too common,” Willson said.
Canada’s first Office of the Sport Integrity Commissioner was launched in June to perform independent investigations of claims of abuse and maltreatment. But it can’t handle complaints from sports that have yet to sign up. While Canadian Sport Minister Pascale St-Onge has set a deadline of April 2023 for national organizations to sign on, weightlifting and volleyball are the only two thus far. Dozens more are in negotiations. In July, St-Onge announced a freeze on GymCan’s federal funding until it does agree.
Willson said one of the biggest drawbacks to the recent news around abuse in hockey, gymnastics and other sports is the potential “hesitation for parents put their kids in sports. The reason that we have these conversations is because we want sport to be better.”