The 'gymternet' reacts: where does gymnastics go from here?

A bipartisan group of U.S. senators asked for a special committee to investigate the scandal. And on Wednesday, the head of the U.S. Olympic Committee, Scott Blackmun, stepped down under pressure from a group that included Olympians.

This weekend, America’s elite gymnasts will compete at the American Cup in Chicago, the first major meet for the women since the implosion of their national governing body. Several current gymnasts have expressed concern that the upheaval within USA Gymnastics will hurt their careers.

Members of the “gymternet” responded to our questions with posts in our comments section, on social media and in emails. Some commenters said they knew Nassar, either personally or through an online association.

Gwendolyn from California, a retired gymnast who competed for eight years, said Nassar befriended her online after she wrote to him to ask for help with a persistent injury. “I remember feeling shocked and confused,” she said about reading the initial reports of his abuse. “I didn’t want to believe that the ‘doctor’ that I had briefly come to know could do such a thing. Later learning that he abused over 100 gymnasts, including those whom I looked up to while growing up, I was mortified.”

Janae Janik, 22, from Seattle, said she was subjected to emotional abuse by her coaches: “I’ve realized that much of my own struggle with depression, anxiety and an eating disorder stemmed from this abuse.” Janik was a competitive gymnast in the Junior Olympic system and later for the University of Washington. Janik said she trained at the same gym with two prominent accusers of Nassar, McKayla Maroney and Mattie Larson, though she never met him.

“The stories coming out in the media are shocking,” Janik said in an email. “But to those of us who lived it, they’re all too familiar.

“A lot of emotional abuse is seen as very normal, and I believe that needs to change through educating both coaches and athletes on what that looks like.”

Karen Psiaki from Georgia, who said she competed in gymnastics for 12 years, said she wanted to become a sports medicine doctor because of Nassar. “It makes me sick to think that I, like so many, idolized him and the entire elite gymnastics world for so many years!” she wrote. Now, she said, “I would think twice about letting my children be part of the elite competitive world unless I could SEE the changes being made and felt comfortable that it was a safe environment.”

Many writers acknowledged that they faced abuse as gymnasts themselves. “After taking several months off to rehab an injured Achilles, I was told upon my return that I had developed cellulite on my butt. I was 10,” said Nicole Johnson, a gymnastics coach in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

“Hiding pain, discomfort and struggle had earned me accolades in gymnastics,” said Sarah Payne of San Francisco, who said that her coping strategies haunted her into adulthood. She added that she assumed the same would be true after leaving the gymnastics world. “As an adult, I assumed submitting to authority, never asking for raises or reporting questionable behavior would lead to professional rewards. How wrong I was! We are doing a disservice to our gymnasts by teaching them that silence equals success.”

Sarah from New Jersey became a gymnastics coach after participating in competitive gymnastics for most of her youth and “struggled with anxiety and mental blocks.”

“I think that’s why I started coaching,” she said, “and why I love coaching and empowering girls so much.”

Some parents of gymnasts said they would demand changes in their children’s gyms. “If all of us gym parents don’t start asking those uncomfortable questions, like ‘Can I please see a copy of the gym rules, and do you run background checks on your staff?’ it leaves our kids just as vulnerable to history repeating itself in the future,” said Karla Fuentes, 36, from Rego Park, Queens. Fuentes and her husband participate, with their nearly 2-year-old daughter, Anastasia Mikaela (named for the Olympic gold medalists Nastia Liukin and McKayla Maroney, said Fuentes), in parent and tot classes at her local gym.

Fuentes said that her gym told her that it did not have written policies on background checks for staff or on staff being alone with athletes. “I don’t know why I am afraid of offending the coach for asking for something that should be so obvious, but I am — and I have to assume that other parents are as well.”

Ty Schalter, 36, sends his daughter Luisa, 9, to Twistars USA Gymnastics Club in Lansing, Michigan, where many of Nassar’s victims said they suffered through his “treatments.” The head coach at Twistars, John Geddert, was named by many victims of Nassar as an enabler of abuse who was himself physically and emotionally abusive to gymnasts. I connected with Schalter on Twitter after he posted an article he wrote about Luisa.

Luisa is a low-level competitive gymnast at Twistars who has never been personally coached by Geddert, Schalter said. In a direct message on Twitter, Schalter said the mood at Twistars has been dark in the wake of Nassar’s trial. “There’s broad uncertainty about the future of the gym, and I think most parents feel those who haven’t been around the gym as these stories have come out can’t understand the difficult choices we’ve all been making.”

Many parents at other gyms, he said in a phone interview, “want blood.” He added that if Twistars were shuttered, it would put a lot of coaches out of work, some of whom were victims of Nassar, and take the sport away from children, some of whom were victims. “That’s not better for our kids,” he said. “Why not show solidarity for the victims?”

Schalter did not believe the scandal was “a one-gym problem” centered on Twistars. “It’s a sportwide culture issue that needs to be addressed from the top down and bottom up.”

Gymnastics fans also worried about the conflict between supporting the athletes and supporting a system that failed them. Jessica Taylor Price from Somerville, Massachusetts, a freelance writer who contributes to thegymter.net regularly, said, “It’s terrible that the levels of dysfunction in the sport were so much worse than we thought, and I can’t help but feel complicit.”

Vanessa from New York, a former tumbler and gymnastics fan who continues to take gymnastics classes as an adult, said: “Do I even continue to watch this sport, or do I show my anger in not supporting USAG? But by not watching or supporting them, I’m taking away from the gymnasts who have worked quite literally their entire lives to be on a national stage.”

Price wondered whether fans boycotting gymnastics meets like the national championships would send a message to USA Gymnastics. Another fan, Emily from California, said: “I can’t imagine watching USAG meets, although I hate the idea of not supporting young gymnasts. Gymnastics used to be an escape for me from the harsh world of work, and stress, and politics. But now it’s all coalescing into a story about a world where women aren’t heard.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.