Gymnastics still failing young athletes, Nassar case judge says at worlds

Gymnastics is still failing its athletes "in almost every way" despite the reforms that followed the Larry Nassar abuse scandal, Judge Rosemarie Aquilina said in Rotterdam in remarks reported on Monday, October 19, 2026. Aquilina, the Ingham County, Michigan, judge who sentenced the former USA Gymnastics team doctor in January 2018, was speaking at an event organised by the athlete group Gymnasts for Change International alongside the 2026 Artistic Gymnastics World Championships, which run in the Dutch city from October 17 to 25. She described many of the changes made by governing bodies as "window dressing" and said young athletes still fear that speaking up could cost them their place in the sport.

Gymnastics is one of the few Olympic sports in which athletes, especially girls, often reach the top level in their teens. That means the people with the most power over a young gymnast's life, coaches, team doctors, selectors and federation officials, are adults, while the athletes themselves may be children. The Nassar case, in which more than 150 women and girls gave statements at his 2018 sentencing hearing, showed how that imbalance can be exploited when complaints are ignored and success is placed above welfare.

Aquilina's message is that the rules written since then have not yet changed that imbalance enough. Her core point is about voice. "Without a voice, there's no choice and there's no change," she said. If young athletes believe that reporting abuse, an injury or harsh treatment will cost them their place on a team, they will stay silent, and problems will continue regardless of what the official policies say.

The concerns raised by Gymnasts for Change Canada go beyond abuse in the narrow sense. Training through injuries, shouting, comments about body shape and an obsession with being thin are everyday practices that athletes' groups have long described as harmful to physical and mental health. For a teenager, those pressures arrive at the same time as growth, exams and the ordinary stress of adolescence.

For young athletes everywhere, including the growing number of Indian children in gymnastics, swimming, athletics and other early-specialisation sports, the lesson is practical. Talent and training matter, but so do a coach who explains rather than shouts, rest when injured, and an adult outside the sport whom the athlete trusts. Families can ask clubs and academies what their safeguarding policy is and who a child can report concerns to without going through their own coach.

Short-term: The remarks, made during the world championships, put athlete welfare in the spotlight while the sport's leaders and federations are gathered in one place, and add pressure on governing bodies to answer the criticism.

Long-term: Athlete groups want independent reporting systems, accountability for officials who ignore complaints, and a coaching culture that does not treat pain, fear and extreme thinness as part of success. Aquilina's own estimate is that such change could take decades.

Who is affected: Young gymnasts and their families; coaches, clubs and national federations; World Gymnastics and national bodies such as USA Gymnastics; and athletes in other sports where children train intensively from an early age.

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