Former gymnastics coach gets 90 years for secretly filming young athletes in gym bathroom

Sean Gardner received the maximum 90-year federal prison sentence for secretly recording young female gymnasts undressing, a case that also revealed years of ignored warnings inside the sport.

U.S. District Judge Kristi Johnson handed down the full term Wednesday after the former youth coach pleaded guilty to three federal child pornography production charges. He got 30 years on each count for planting a hidden camera in a bathroom at a gymnastics studio in Purvis, Mississippi.

Fox News reported that Gardner, 39, once held a prominent role coaching young athletes and directing an annual winter meet. The sentence is expected to amount to life behind bars.

Between December 2017 and April 2018, Gardner placed the camera where students undressed and used the bathroom. Investigators later recovered videos showing close-up images of at least 10 minors naked or undressing.

An FBI affidavit described roughly 50 videos and 400 photos seized from his residence. In one video, Gardner is allegedly seen turning off the camera himself.

Parents and coaches raised alarms years before the arrest

The hidden-camera crimes did not happen in a vacuum. Civil lawsuits and witness accounts show people flagged Gardner’s conduct long before federal agents moved in.

A mother of another Mississippi gymnast emailed USA Gymnastics with concerns about his behavior. Gardner’s own boss in Mississippi wrote the organization in January 2018 about what she called his “grooming behavior.”

Lawsuits allege USA Gymnastics and the U.S. Center for SafeSport were told about inappropriate behavior as early as 2017 yet failed to remove him for years. Those same oversight failures have left families searching for answers in other serious abuse cases, including when ICE deported a convicted sex offender who abused his own daughter.

Liberty Raines joined Jump’In Gymnastics in Purvis when she was 11. She later described a coaching ritual that became routine.

Raines told reporters:

"Each of us would line up to get a hug, and he would kiss us on our forehead, and pat us each on the butt."

She added that the pattern felt ordinary at the time.

"It was so normalized. I don’t think any of us thought anything of it."

Breitbart noted the same account as part of the broader record of how Gardner operated around young athletes.

Iowa move brought fresh allegations and a delayed reckoning

In 2018 Gardner moved to Chow’s Gymnastics and Dance Institute in West Des Moines, Iowa. The gym, founded by prominent coach Liang “Chow” Qiao, has produced Olympic champions. Gardner coached skilled young gymnasts there, including Finley Weldon, then 11 and aiming toward elite competition.

Weldon later said Gardner acted strange from the start, made inappropriate jokes, and asked teen girls about their sex lives. She said he touched her inappropriately while stretching and spotting.

Weldon put it plainly in an interview:

"I knew something was not really right about him."

Several former students at Chow’s alleged to police and in civil suits that he used his position to prey on them. In 2022, SafeSport temporarily suspended Gardner after a Chow’s gymnast alleged sexual abuse. The gym fired him. SafeSport said Chow and other coaches had been aware of sexual misconduct allegations against Gardner but failed to report them as required.

Iowa police received the allegations and said they would wait to decide how to proceed until the federal case finished. As of the latest reporting, Gardner has not been charged on the Iowa claims. Accountability in high-profile sex-crime cases often stretches across jurisdictions, as seen when Andrew and Tristan Tate were held in Miami federal custody while facing overseas charges.

FBI arrest closed the Mississippi chapter with a maximum term

Agents arrested Gardner last summer. Investigators recovered the bathroom videos years after they were made while looking into the Iowa sexual-abuse claims. He pleaded guilty to placing the hidden camera at the Purvis studio and to the three production counts.

The New York Post reported that Judge Johnson imposed the maximum possible sentence on every count. CBS News detailed the same outcome and the evidence trail that led there.

Federal child-pornography production charges carry heavy penalties for a reason. The victims were minors entrusted to a coach inside a gym bathroom. The recordings were deliberate, repeated, and stored on his computers.

Parents send children to gymnastics for discipline, skill, and healthy competition. They do not send them to be filmed naked by the adult in charge. When warning emails go unanswered and governing bodies move slowly, predators keep access. That pattern has appeared in other recent cases involving minors and serious criminal allegations, including the d4vd murder hearing evidence that drew national attention.

Gardner’s guilty plea and the 90-year term close the federal case on the Mississippi recordings. Civil lawsuits against USA Gymnastics and SafeSport continue to press claims that earlier action could have stopped him sooner. Iowa authorities still hold their charging decision.

A coach who turns a bathroom into a recording studio belongs in prison for a long time. Institutions that slow-walk clear warnings about adults around kids owe the public faster action and real consequences of their own.