Long before his banishment from gymnastics and arrest in Iowa after accusations he abused girls he coached, warning signs about Sean Gardner were coming from several directions — his former boss, his gymnasts and their parents.
The 18-year-old is heading into her freshman year at Iowa State University, where she’ll be a member of the Cyclones gymnastics team. She spoke with the AP on Wednesday, less than a week after Sean Gardner was arrested on a child sexual exploitation charge.
The U.S. gymnastics world was only just recovering from a devastating sexual abuse scandal when a promising young coach moved from Mississippi to Iowa to take a job in 2018 at an elite academy known for training Olympic champions.
A serial sexual abuse convict from Cedar Rapids, who in 2021 was sentenced to 12 years in prison after convictions in two sexual abuse cases, has now been charged with sexually assaulting a child back in 2014.
A Cedar Rapids man was charged last week with multiple counts of sexual abuse after police say he sexually abused a girl when she was younger than 12 and again when she was 13.
An Iowa City man, who was previously convicted for enticing a minor, was sentenced to 10 years for enticing minors and sexually abusing one girl under the age of 13. The judge ran the recent sentence consecutively to his previous five-year sentence.
A North Liberty man was arrested Monday on charges that he sexually abused a 15-year-old.
The trial of a former Marion man accused of repeatedly sexually assaulting a child between 2018 and 2021 has been bumped for the 11th time. This case is one of numerous Linn County sexual abuse cases that have been lingering in the system for more than a year.
An 18-year-old from Des Moines was arrested Friday in Linn County on charges that he abused two children while he was living in Cedar Rapids a few years ago.
A 23-year-old Cedar Rapids man pleaded to lesser charges for sexually abusing a girl since she was 6 years old. The abuse continued until she was 12 years old. He faces up to 22 years in prison.
A Chicago man was sentenced in Johnson County court Tuesday to 10 years in prison on a charge of third-degree sexual assault.
An Iowa City man was arrested Wednesday on a charge that he sexually abused an 8-year-old child.
An Iowa City man was arrested Wednesday on a charge of third-degree sexual abuse of a child, coerced by a person in authority.
Linn County Attorney Nick Maybanks knew the sex abuse cases usually took longer to move through the system, but when he started looking at the data it was more “compelling” than he thought. There are 80 open cases - four have been pending since 2021 and 12 since 2023. He asked the court if they could work together to speed up the process.
A Cedar Rapids man who was charged in 2022 with multiple charges of sexual abuse of three children pleaded Friday and faces up to 30 years in prison.
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