The Foundation for Global Sports Development delivers and supports initiatives that promote fair play, education, and the benefits of abuse-free sport for youth.
White Law PLLC was founded to provide more personalized representation to clients facing legal dilemmas. Whether you have an issue that is complex or relatively straightforward, any legal matter can have a significant impact on your life. Our team of experienced lawyers based in Okemos, Michigan, strive to deliver outstanding legal services that exceed your expectations. We utilize our extensive legal knowledge and the latest in technology to bring you effective and proven solutions to your legal issues.
‘Straight up child abuse’: Canadian gymnast quit at the age of 13 due to what she alleges was a horrific and abusive environment
‘Straight up child abuse’: Canadian gymnast quit at the age of 13 due to what she alleges was a horrific and abusive environment“Mom thought it was to check on me,” she said, “but it was to blame me, they were yelling at my mom on the phone, ‘She should have been able to do it, she hurt herself, it’s not our fault.'” In 2011, Jones sued her coaches and received damages in a mediation. settlement. She quit GYMNASTICS shortly after the fall and considers herself fortunate to have escaped some of the torment that might have followed if she’d stuck with it much longer. As a seven year-old, she says she was already following the unspoken code of the gym and trying to make herself vomit before the daily weighing sessions. Fifteen years later, she says that she still has a recurring nightmare, a feeling that she’s arguing with her coach, Vladimir Lashin. “It’s very out of character for me because I don’t raise my voice, I’m very self-controlled. I don’t know what we’re yelling about, but I’m yelling like crazy, and I can’t yell over him. I can’t yell loud enough.” Forced stand on scales. After her hamstring snapped, Cline told CNN that she was still expected to train for three to four hours a day. Two months later, it was time for the national trials. On the eve of the event, Cline says Vladimir Lashin asked her to try a Yurchenko double pike – one of the most dangerous vaults in GYMNASTICS. Named after the Soviet gymnast Natalia Yurchenko, the move involves a blind backhand spring onto the vault – any kind of misstep can be catastrophic. “I think I laughed,” she recalled, “I thought he was kidding because it was so absurd that he would even be expecting me to do this when I was still injured – I hadn’t been vaulting for weeks.” Cline says she begged him to assist with the vault and he reluctantly spotted her. “I had to take stock of whether I could still move my limbs,” she continues. “Thankfully, I could, but then I realized that he was still screaming at me and telling me to do it again and again. There was no way I could say no to that request.” Cline says her neck was in excruciating pain as she attempted what would be her last-ever vault in GYMNASTICS. “I completely missed one hand off the vault and landed on my head again. I was crying in the change room with ice on my neck when he demanded that I come back out onto the floor. “Then he forcibly took me by the arm and dragged me into his office and forced me to stand on the scale. ‘This is why you can’t do it! He interrogated me about what Easter candy I had eaten.” It was a final humiliation, but Cline says that while she was spinning through the air on her final, ill-fated vault, she had a moment of clarity and made the decision to quit the sport in the interests of her own. self-preservation. Her dreams of perhaps competing in the Olympics had been dashed and her GYMNASTICS career was over. Replacing the sport that she had so loved would now be a lifetime of debilitating pain and psychological torment. And she was still just 13 years old. Over the last few years, the sport of GYMNASTICS has lurched from one crisis to another. Hundreds of athletes accused the former USA GYMNASTICS national team DOCTOR Larry NASSAR of sexual abuse and their governing bodies of failing to protect them. Following his guilty pleas on child pornography and a number of sexual assault charges in 2017, he will spend the rest of his life in prison. In a scandal dating back two decades, more than 368 athletes came forward to allege sexual abuse in GYMNASTICS programs across the country. Around the same time, other national teams were beginning to come to terms with their own abusive cultures. In February 2021, GYMNASTICS New Zealand’s Chief Executive Tony Compier admitted that “emotional abuse, body shaming, physically abusive training practices, harassment and bullying,” had been uncovered by an independent review into the sport. Two weeks later, a group-claim lawsuit alleged widespread physical and psychological abuse by British GYMNASTICS coaches on athletes as young as six years old. The law firm representing them, Hausfeld, told CNN that they are working with 38 athletes, including four Olympians, and are in direct negotiation with British GYMNASTICS. In May 2021, the Australian Human Rights Commission concluded that GYMNASTICS in the country contributed to a “high-risk environment for abuse.” The report found evidence of “bullying, harassment, abuse, neglect, racism, sexism and ableism,” enabled by a “win-at-all-costs approach, the young age of female gymnasts and inherent power. imbalances; a culture of control; and an overarching tolerance of negative behavior.” And in September last year, trainers in the Swiss national program resigned en masse after an ethics investigation upheld athletes’ complaints of psychological abuse and a series of poor performances. Now, Canadian GYMNASTICS is facing its own moment of reckoning. Cline is the representative plaintiff in a class action lawsuit which has been filed against GYMNASTICS Canada and half a dozen provincial governing bodies, including GYMNASTICS BC, which would have overseen the gym in which Cline says she became so damaged. Though not listed as defendants, both Vladimir and Svetlana Lashin are named in the lawsuit’s allegations, which details her vaulting injury incident and “almost daily. physical abuse. inextricably linked to a culture of psychological abuse” and “inappropriate physical contact.” The lawsuit also says that “rather than face punishment for their abusive conduct, Vladimir and Svetlana were rewarded by both GYMNASTICS BC and GYMNASTICS Canada.” Notably, according to the lawsuit, Vladimir was named as a coach for Team Canada at. the 2004 Olympics in Athens and then promoted to National Coach/High Performance Director in Women’s Artistic GYMNASTICS in 2009. According to the lawsuit a number of Canadian gymnasts have brought forward complaints “spanning decades,” alleging “sexual, physical and psychological abuse and institutional complicity that has enabled the culture of mistreatment. to persist.” The suit is the first stage of a complicated legal process that could escalate exponentially in scale and take years to resolve. “We really need these institutions to be held accountable for the systemic abuse that they’ve allowed to ensure for decades,” Cline explained to CNN. “We’re trying to send a message that ‘you will not be able to allow these things to continue without being held liable for them.'” The suit is also intent on providing compensation to the athletes who need intensive physical and psychological treatment and Cline has reason to believe that hundreds of former. athletes could get involved. In March, more than 400 male and female Canadian gymnasts put their names to an open letter which explained that fears of retribution had prevented them from speaking up about a ‘toxic culture and abusive practices’ within the sport. In response, GYMNASTICS Canada said in a statement: “While we are saddened to learn that dozens of athletes feel that we failed to address these issues, we are committed to continuing to educate and advocate for system-wide reforms that will help ensure all participants feel respected, included and safe when training. and competing in sport.” Almost all say they have experienced physical and/or psychological abuse, but there are also survivors of sexual assault. “We know there are many, many out there who have experienced sexual abuse,” said Cline. “Unfortunately, we know it’s a component and we know that it’s actually quite significant.” After the lawsuit was filed on Wednesday, GYMNASTICS BC told CNN that “as we have yet to be served with or provided any official notification or legal documents, GymBC is not in a position to comment at this. time.” In a statement sent to CNN on Thursday, GYMNASTICS Canada said while the organization had also not been served the suit it took the allegations “very seriously,” adding that it was “committed to providing a safe environment for members of our sport.” Since going public with her story about her life. as a young gymnast in a 2020 blog, Cline says she has been flooded with messages from athletes all over the country, whose stories echo her own. She has also spoken with survivors from all over the world. “If you put our stories side by side and you removed our names,” she said, “you wouldn’t be able to tell who’s who. We’ve got a very serious problem, not just within Canada, but within GYMNASTICS generally.” Cline believes that because the athletes are so young when they start training that they are incredibly vulnerable. She spent more time with her coaches than with her parents, and she says the athletes were explicitly told not to share their experiences in the gym with her family at home as a culture of silence was encouraged. “We were counselled on how to avoid talking to our parents about it, it was made very, very clear that we would be in significant trouble if we told our parents what was going on,” says Cline. “If these things were happening in a school or at a home, there would be serious consequences almost immediately. “But for some reason, when we put it in the context of a sport and particularly GYMNASTICS, we normalize it to such a degree that we completely lose sight of the fact that this is child abuse. This is straight up child abuse.” It’s almost 20 years since she walked away from the sport she had once loved, but Cline says she is still constantly tormented by it – both emotionally and physically. There’s the debilitating back pain since the age of 14, the arthritis in her neck, she says she has nightmares and is constantly on the brink of an eating disorder. “I don’t weigh myself,” she reveals, “I can never get on a scale. Even if I’m at the DOCTOR, I ask them not to tell me the number. It has required constant vigilance to make sure that I’m not slipping into really harmful eating patterns. “I’ve talked to dozens and dozens of girls and boys and they very much struggle in adulthood, whether it’s eating disorders or PTSD or depression or self-harm addiction. “And, of course, the debilitating physical pain. This doesn’t just stop because someone has quit the sport, it’s something that’s going to continue to plague these people for the rest of their lives.” Cline concedes that the sport of GYMNASTICS will always present a risk of injury, but she believes that such injuries would be mitigated with healthy training. methods. And she certainly doesn’t think that the psychological trauma should be inherent to the sport.
Download View in BrowserThe Foundation for Global Sports Development delivers and supports initiatives that promote fair play, education, and the benefits of abuse-free sport for youth.
White Law PLLC was founded to provide more personalized representation to clients facing legal dilemmas. Whether you have an issue that is complex or relatively straightforward, any legal matter can have a significant impact on your life. Our team of experienced lawyers based in Okemos, Michigan, strive to deliver outstanding legal services that exceed your expectations. We utilize our extensive legal knowledge and the latest in technology to bring you effective and proven solutions to your legal issues.