If you are having trouble keeping up with the ongoing series of gymnasts brave enough to come forward with incidents of past abuse, catch up on the GymCastic podcast.
Svetlana Khorkina was a fantastic gymnast. But she’s clearly an egomaniac with no empathy. Literally the last person in the Gymnastics world who should be commenting on safety and ethics.
The Dutch Federation has taken allegations very seriously. And especially the admissions of Gerrit Beltman, now coaching in Singapore.
Last week, the KNGU announced an independent investigation into all Gym Sports. And urged athletes to report abuses to the Center for Safe Sports in the Netherlands.
‘The stories are coming from all sides,’ KNGU chairwoman Monique Kempff told a news conference. ‘And if you want to make a cultural shift, you cannot take half measures.’
The current Team Netherlands supports their coaching system.
The statement can be read on the Instagram pages of Sanne Wevers, Lieke Wevers, Eythora Thorsdottir, Vera van Pol, Laura de Witt, Tisha Volleman, Sara van Disseldorp, Naomi Visser, Kirsten Polderman and Sanna Veerman. Céline van Gerner, who stopped last August, also shared the statement. …
“The past period has been an accumulation of sad news from the world of gymnastics. First internationally, but now also nationally. Our condolences go to everyone who has had negative experiences in our sport.”
“We do not recognize ourselves in the image that is now sketched of Dutch gymnastics with regard to the stories of the past. Where in the past there was room for physical and mental flogging, this is a thing of the past …
You have opportunity to report incidents to FIGalongside National reporting systems.
Watanabe:
In the wake of this (Nassar) affair, the FIG has established the Gymnastics Ethics Foundation to encourage anyone to report any form of rules violation, abuse and harassment, and to provide a safe, confidential mechanism to do so. www.gymnasticsethicsfoundation.org/safeguarding
The task was not easy, but today the Foundation is fully operational and is investigating several cases.
As well as any form of physical violence clearly being intolerable, insults and threats have no place in any training hall. …
Sara Teristi … “first met Larry Nassar–the most prolific known sex criminal in American sports history–at a gym in Michigan in late 1988.
She was a young gymnast in a vulnerable state, she says, having been emotionally trampled by her hard-driving coach, John Geddert, a man who made her feel worthless.
Nassar, who was volunteering as team doctor, zoomed in on her right away. …
Today, she says she wrestles more with the psychological abuse of her coach than the sexual abuse of the doctor. …
The International Gymnastics Federation (FIG) has been urged to hold a worldwide symposium “as soon as possible” to address the coaching culture within the sport in the wake of several abuse scandals.
In an open letter to the FIG, the Royal Dutch Gymnastics Federation (KNGU) expressed concern the culture portrayed in the Netflix documentary Athlete A is “not isolated but constitutes a risk for the entire world of gymnastics around the globe”. …
Recall that former Dutch gymnasts Stasja Köhler and Simone Heitinga wrote a book detailing the abusive training methods they endured as elite gymnasts. The coaches accused were Gerrit Beltman and Frank Louter.
The Dutch Federation responded but did not apologize, perhaps on the advice of lawyers:
We continue to call on all athletes of all levels to report to the Center for Safe Sports and / or the Institute of Sports Justice (ISR) if they have experienced undesirable behavior, both now and in the past. …
The Dutch Federation has also launched an independent investigation focusing on top athletes from the age of 12 who were active from 2013.
Beltman coached in Belgium and Canada, as well as Netherlands.
“The behavior I showed is in no way justifiable. 
Gymnastics Coaching.com 