Canada gymnasts break silence on abuses and 'toxic culture'
They excelled in the athletic spotlight, but their feats on the beam and bars masked a darker reality: Canadian gymnasts are taking legal action to denounce a "toxic" culture of physical, sexual and psychological abuse by the sport's top brass.
Having tolerated the harm for decades, victims around the world have come forward in the wake of a US gymnastics scandal that broke in 2015 before spreading abroad, including to Britain where athletes launched a similar legal action last year.
As a child gymnast in Vancouver, Amelia Cline dreamed of Olympic glory. In her teens, the elite athlete devoted thirty hours a week to training.
"Unfortunately the early years of my gymnastics days, as positive as they were, they've been somewhat wiped out by those last three years that were so brutal," the former gymnast, now 32, told AFP.
She and other athletes on Wednesday filed a lawsuit against Gymnastics Canada and several provincial federations for tolerating a climate of abuse and mistreatment for decades.
"The lawsuit is essentially designed to hopefully hold these institutions accountable for systemic psychological, emotional, physical and sexual violence," she said.
At the end of March, a group of more than 70 present and former gymnasts published an open letter to Sports Canada denouncing a "toxic culture and abusive practices that persist within Canadian gymnastics."
The number of signatories has since grown to more than 400, with the group calling for an independent investigation to shed light on the sport's problems.
The "general public really doesn't understand the magnitude of the abuses that are occurring at the gyms," said Kim Shore, a former gymnast and spokeswoman for Gymnast For Change Canada, who says her daughter has also suffered mistreatment in the sport.
Micheline Calmy-Rey, president of the Gymnastics Ethics Foundation created in 2019 in response to the scandal said "it seems logical to us that an independent investigation be conducted."
Gymnastics Canada on Thursday said the allegations in the lawsuit "describe behaviour that is unacceptable in any sport environment, and we take them very seriously."
In a blog post, Cline says that at 14, she weighed 85 pounds (38.5 kg) and was "grilled about my weight on a weekly basis."
Some 20 years after giving up gymnastics, she says she still suffers from the "long-term effects" of mistreatment that left her with chronic pain and made it hard for her to maintain healthy eating habits.
Like many of her peers, she laments a "culture of fear and silence" in gymnastics clubs across the country. "You don't question what (the coaches) are doing. They're the experts, and they're the ones who are going to take you to the Olympics," she explained.
"I was always afraid of my coaches," another gymnast told AFP on condition of anonymity. "I loved gymnastics. I loved travelling. I loved being with the other girls, but I was so afraid of them."
She described a powerful loneliness felt by child gymnasts, whose parents were often banned from practices. Very young athletes were even told never to speak about their training.
"Many times the kids are told what happens in the gym stays in the gym," recalled Shore.
She says gymnastics has been corrupted by a "culture of control and dominance" over athletes.
"The provincial bodies are made up of individuals who are conflicted," she said, explaining that "in some provinces, the chair of the board is also the head coach of a gymnastics club."
Now that a claim has been filed and the problems have been exposed, Cline and her lawyers believe that the number of plaintiffs will increase "significantly."
Cline just wishes her nightmare will never be experienced by other young gymnasts.
"There's really no other mechanism within Canada to actually hold institutions like this accountable except through the legal system," she said.
(责任编辑:行业动态)
- 水产品占“四席”!广州南沙十个农产品上榜“国字号”
- Dyson releases all
- Former Apple employee charged with stealing self
- N. Korea refuses all contact, including summit, with Japan
- 25 Years Later: A Brief Analysis of GPU Processing Efficiency
- Google Gemini now allows AI
- Huge leap in efficiency brings see
- At Google I/O 2023, Search gets an AI overhaul
- 9辆“母亲健康快车”昨日出发 为我市妇女儿童送健康
- 护航孩子成长 解决职工后顾之忧
- Twitter users report deleted tweets return, won't delete
- BBC presenter caught messing with her phone on live television
- Gmail gets a blue checkmark to thwart phishing attempts
-
抖音超600万次传播量!广东省农事运动会乡村直播大赛火出圈_南方+_南方plus抖音平台超600万次流量!上千名乡村主播投稿!日前,作为广东省农事运动会乡村直播大赛线上海选赛区,在抖音平台上,带有话题 ...[详细]
-
N. Korea refuses all contact, including summit, with Japan
Kim Yo-jong, sister of North Korea's leader Kim Jong-un, attends a wreath-laying ceremony at Ho Chi ...[详细] -
Pixel 7a vs. iPhone 14 vs. Samsung Galaxy S23: Comparing specs, price
It's that time again, folks. Time to compare three phones that are really all pretty good.Our focus ...[详细] -
SpaceX successfully performs its 20th rocket landing in Florida
What goes up, must come down, and SpaceX is proving that again and again with their rockets. The Elo ...[详细] -
Weather update for second Pak vs Ban second Test match day one
ListentoarticleThe second Test between Pakistan and Bangladesh, part of the ICC World Test Champions ...[详细] -
Harvard's new organic flow battery uses a long
Storing renewable energy is just as important as generating it, and flow batteries might be one of t ...[详细] -
Meta slapped with $1.3 billion fine for sending EU user data to the U.S.
Facebook's parent company Meta has been fined 1.2 billion euro ($1.3 billion) for breaching the Euro ...[详细] -
“这样就更加扎实了,就算再来一次7级地震也不用担心。”近日,名山区双河乡扎营村党支部书记丁廷雪走进2组李治军家刚刚重建完工的新房——从李治军开工到完工,丁廷雪最少跑了20趟,就为了让重建农房质量过关。 ...[详细]
-
Haider all set for Paralympics Ceremony
PARIS:Pakistan's premier athlete at the Paralympics Haider Ali will be representing the country ...[详细] -
Attention beauty gurus and Dyson fans, the long-awaited Dyson Airstrait hair straightener has finall ...[详细]
Europe now has a huge AI gap, for better or for worse
Ethereum's price surpasses $700 in another astonishing crypto
- Spaceship tech slashes energy usage of existing AC systems
- Twitter users report deleted tweets return, won't delete
- That interstellar asteroid probably wasn't sent by aliens
- China's top legislator Zhao Leji meets N. Korean leader?Kim Jong
- Where to pre
- Clear skies over Seoul as typhoon passes
- Russian veto brings end to UN panel that monitors NK nuclear sanctions