A former gymnastics coach who secretly filmed young female students in a Mississippi gym has been handed a 90-year federal prison sentence, a punishment that effectively means he will spend the rest of his life behind bars.
U.S. District Judge Kristi Johnson imposed the maximum allowable sentence on Sean Gardner, 39, on Wednesday. Gardner pleaded guilty to three federal counts of child pornography production and received 30 years for each charge to run consecutively.
Investigators say Gardner concealed a camera inside a bathroom at a gymnastics studio in Purvis, Mississippi, where he recorded at least 10 minors either undressed or in the process of undressing between December 2017 and April 2018. The recordings were discovered years later on his personal computers during a separate investigation into sexual abuse allegations in Iowa.
Gardner had previously worked at Chow’s Gymnastics and Dance Institute in West Des Moines, Iowa, a well-known training facility founded by Olympic-level coach Liang “Chow” Qiao. Several former students at that facility have alleged in police reports and civil lawsuits that Gardner exploited his coaching position to prey on them. He has not been criminally charged in connection with those Iowa allegations, and authorities indicated they would revisit the matter following the conclusion of the federal case.
The case has raised serious questions about whether USA Gymnastics and the U.S. Center for SafeSport acted swiftly enough to protect young athletes. Attorneys representing some of Gardner’s accusers allege that both organizations were informed of concerning behavior involving Gardner as early as 2017 but did not move to remove him from the sport for several years.
SafeSport issued a temporary suspension against Gardner in 2022 after a gymnast from Chow’s came forward with allegations of sexual abuse. Chow’s Gymnastics terminated Gardner at that time. SafeSport later disclosed that Chow and other coaches at the facility had reportedly been aware of misconduct allegations against Gardner but failed to report them as required under the organization’s policies.
A federal judge dismissed SafeSport as a defendant in two related lawsuits in May, ruling the organization was protected under federal immunity law. Multiple civil suits against Gardner, USA Gymnastics and Chow’s Gymnastics remain active in the courts.
Gardner’s arrest last summer by the FBI reignited a broader national conversation about the systemic failures that have allowed coaches in elite youth sports to abuse their positions of trust and evade accountability for years before facing consequences.