Long after Nassar scandal, gymnastics coaches accused of abuse remain ·

25 Jul 2024, 00:00

It was the gardening gloves that made Sydney Freidin’s stomach turn.

She was scrolling through social media when she saw a photo of them on the hands of her former coach, Artur Akopyan. He was a gymnastics legend — an Olympian for the Soviet Union, former member of the USA Gymnastics coaching staff and personal coach to Olympians, including gold medalist McKayla Maroney.

For Freidin, though, seeing Akopyan brought back different memories. She recalled him once flinging a young girl into the air in rage after she made a mistake during an aerial cartwheel. The girl began to cry after she hit the floor, Freidin and another former gymnast said.

And then there were those gloves. Akopyan was known to wear them to spot gymnasts at All Olympia Gymnastics Center, the California gym he co-owned. When he was angry with Freidin after a mistake on the uneven bars, she said, he would grab her and throw her to the ground so hard that his gloved hands left marks and even bruises.

The gloves meant Freidin’s worst fear was true: Akopyan was back.

Gymnastics was supposed to change. After USA Gymnastics was roiled by revelations of sexual abuse by former team doctor Larry Nassar, a wave of gymnasts, including Freidin in 2020, accused their former coaches of physical and emotional abuse — and of enabling Nassar in the process. Their sport’s toxic culture, gymnasts said, was part of the reason the doctor had been able to abuse athletes for so long.

USA Gymnastics, the sport’s powerful governing organization, cleaned house and vowed to remake the sport. The U.S. Center for SafeSport, an independent body set up by Congress in the wake of the scandal to investigate misconduct across Olympic sports, promised an era of accountability. Both made significant strides toward preventing and responding to sexual abuse.

But gymnasts’ allegations of physical and emotional abuse in their clubs have been met largely with inaction, an investigation by The Washington Post found, leaving hundreds of young gymnasts still in the care of coaches accused of serious misconduct.

SafeSport has investigated at least six coaches of recent U.S. Olympians or alternates over allegations of emotional and physical abuse, according to news coverage and reporting from The Post, as well as several other coaches of elite gymnasts. But they are all still coaching. None of the probes have resulted in public findings, and most are still open. In 2022, SafeSport “administratively closed” the case against Akopyan and his gym’s co-owner, Galina Marinova, records show, which typically means it did not find enough evidence to move forward but that the case still could be reopened.

Nearly 300 other coaches affiliated with USA Gymnastics have been banned or are suspended for misconduct, according to SafeSport’s database. But most are ineligible because of criminal convictions, not SafeSport’s own investigations. Among the gymnastics coaches SafeSport investigated itself, none were banned solely because of physical or emotional abuse, and only one is suspended.

USA Gymnastics, meanwhile, has chosen not to put restrictions on top coaches under investigation by SafeSport, even when they are accused of serious misconduct. In the instances when the governing body has investigated club coaches itself, without SafeSport, it suspended some coaches after investigations, but it has also faced criticism for lax punishments — including in 2020, when USA Gymnastics allowed the reinstatement of several prominent coaches in California whom it had reportedly found to have committed physical abuse.

The Post interviewed dozens of gymnasts who competed for coaches publicly accused of physical and emotional abuse after Nassar, as well as attorneys, parents, gymnastics officials and advocates, to understand how the sport responded in the wake of the Nassar scandal. The Post also reviewed court records, police reports and medical records.

No case exemplified a failing athlete safety system more than Akopyan’s, which has not been previously reported. Ten former gymnasts told The Post that Akopyan physically abused them or their teammates when they were girls, including nine who said he had thrown young gymnasts to the ground in anger, sometimes hard enough to leave bruises. In 2010, documents show, Los Angeles police investigated him for possible child abuse over allegations he dragged a young girl by the neck and arm, bruising her — an incident two gymnasts told The Post they witnessed. And Desiree Palomares, a former All Olympia gymnast, said that when she was around 11, Akopyan slapped her across the face after he believed she had spoken back to him.

Gymnasts also said Akopyan was emotionally abusive, screaming, degrading them and mocking their injuries. And they said Marinova, the gym’s co-owner, emotionally abused and body-shamed them.

Yet both coaches have continued to work without restrictions. SafeSport’s and USA Gymnastics’ decisions not to take any public action in response to athletes’ complaints, The Post found, concealed the misconduct allegations from the public for years.

Akopyan and Marinova did not respond to a detailed list of allegations sent via email, text message and certified letter. When a reporter delivered the letters to their gym, Marinova told the reporter she did not want to comment.

The coaches have previously denied claims of abuse. In 2016, Mattie Larson, a former All Olympia gymnast and Nassar victim, accused the coaches in a lawsuit of creating an “abusive” and “harassing” environment. In court documents, Akopyan and Marinova denied all of her allegations. They defended themselves in a 2018 letter to parents, saying they had spent 25 years “protecting and loving our girls.”

“Our sacrifice has been met with un-appreciation and betrayal,” they wrote.

They settled Larson’s lawsuit for $1 million, Larson’s attorney said.

In the letter, Akopyan and Marinova announced they were taking a step back from coaching. But they quickly returned to the sport. At its location in Calabasas, Calif., All Olympia now appears to be thriving, promoting on social media a young gymnast who committed to UCLA last year and two who represented Mexico and Jamaica at the 2023 junior world championships.

SafeSport declined to comment on any individual case. But in a statement, SafeSport CEO Ju’Riese Colón suggested the center is trying to tackle a growing caseload more efficiently. “Behavior that was once tolerated or ignored is now prompting individuals to come forward with their stories,” Colón said.

USA Gymnastics also said it could not discuss individual cases. A spokeswoman, Jill Geer, said the organization has made strides toward cultural reform, especially at the national team level, by overhauling its sexual assault reporting process, creating an athlete bill of rights and elevating Nassar survivors to leadership and advisory roles.

Geer said USA Gymnastics referred high-profile cases to SafeSport “in part to avoid potential conflict of interest issues.” SafeSport, she noted, also typically had far more information about allegations than USA Gymnastics. “Unlike USAG, the Center has the evidence, authority to investigate and ability to call witnesses should a hearing be necessary,” Geer said.

Tasha Schwikert Moser, an Olympian who was selected by a committee of Nassar survivors to sit on the board of USA Gymnastics, said she has seen the organization make progress — especially in its national team camps, where top gymnasts gather regularly and which were, for decades, a brutal and abusive environment. At Olympic team trials in June, therapy dogs were brought in to help gymnasts cope with the intense atmosphere.

“They’ve spent years completely revamping policies and procedures, and they’re encouraging athletes to speak up,” Schwikert Moser said.

But she acknowledged that when it came to local clubs — where even elite gymnasts spend the vast majority of their time — the culture was sometimes different despite efforts to educate the thousands of coaches licensed by USA Gymnastics.

“There’s still some coaches out there, elite coaches and club coaches, that just don’t get it. I think that’s the challenge,” Schwikert Moser said. “Not all elite coaches have taken self-reflection and looked in the mirror and said, ‘Wow, I was part of the problem, and I need to change.’”

Three parents of gymnasts who competed at All Olympia after 2020 told The Post they had no concerns about either Akopyan’s or Marinova’s coaching. Their daughters had been treated well there, the parents said.

“There would not have been another place I would have felt as safe when it comes to learning proper gymnastics techniques,” said Stacey Foxson, whose daughter competed at All Olympia. “I’d do it over and over again.”

But many former All Olympia gymnasts said they worried for athletes still in Akopyan and Marinova’s care — and for others in a sport they believe has not yet reformed its toxic culture or sought justice for girls who were physically and emotionally abused.

“It makes no sense to me at all,” said Talitha Jones, who trained at All Olympia as a child and went on to compete for the University of California at Berkeley, “that they still have a gym.”

THEY WERE THERE TO TALK about Nassar, the man who had sexually abused gymnasts for decades. But some of the women in the courtroom for his sentencing also wanted to talk about something else: their own coaches and the culture of the sport at its highest levels.

“Larry, you saw all the physical, mental and emotional abuse from our coaches and USAG national staff,” Jamie Dantzscher, an Olympian, said during Nassar’s 2018 sentencing hearing. “... Instead of protecting children and reporting the abuse you saw, you used your position of power to manipulate and abuse as well.”

Their coaches’ emotional and physical abuse, gymnasts said, had helped to create the world in which Nassar thrived: one in which their bodies were not their own, their instincts could not be trusted, adults were to be feared and winning came at any cost.

Nassar’s sentencing was the beginning of an outcry that would upend the sport. In 2020, USA Gymnastics suspended coach Maggie Haney for eight years after an investigation of emotional and physical abuse allegations made by an Olympian, Laurie Hernandez, and other gymnasts. Haney denied many of the allegations and sued USA Gymnastics, but the case was dismissed in 2022. An arbitrator later reduced the suspension to five years.

Haney’s suspension spurred more gymnasts to report their coaches, speaking up in podcasts and documentaries, on social media and in formal reports. The movement gained a name and a hashtag — #GymnastAlliance — with the hope, gymnasts said at the time, that this was finally the moment for “lasting change.”

But Haney was not just the first coach of recent U.S. Olympians or alternates to be penalized for emotional or physical abuse. She was also the last.

A string of other prominent coaches faced SafeSport investigations for emotional and physical abuse allegations. SafeSport’s 2022 investigation of Valeri Liukin, father of Nastia Liukin and once USA Gymnastics’ national women’s team coordinator, is still open, according to someone who was recently briefed on the case. So is the investigation of Qi Han, who was accused of kicking an injured gymnast at a meet, SafeSport’s database shows. The investigation it launched into Al Fong is also still open, Fong told The Post, after he was the subject of physical and emotional abuse complaints in June 2020. And the Orange County Register reported that SafeSport was also investigating Jiani Wu and her daughter, Anna Li, whose athletes alleged they had pulled their hair and fat-shamed them.

Fong told The Post that the allegations against him were baseless and that he believed SafeSport was succumbing to outside pressure by not deciding the case in his favor. Han, Wu, Li and Liukin did not respond to requests for comment.

SafeSport has not issued public findings against any of those coaches, and only one, Han, is subject to any temporary restrictions while its investigation is ongoing. All are still coaching. One of Liukin’s gymnasts, Hezly Rivera, will compete for the United States in the Paris Olympics.

In its statement, SafeSport said it recently had begun prioritizing cases open longer than two years, which would include those languishing gymnastics investigations. The organization said it had identified more than 120 such cases, roughly one third of which it had resolved since December.

Federal law limits governing bodies from investigating or disciplining accused coaches while SafeSport investigates. But governing bodies are allowed to impose “safety plans,” such as banning unsupervised contact with athletes. There are no safety plans in place for any of the prominent coaches whom SafeSport investigated, aside from Han, according to a USA Gymnastics registry of suspended and restricted coaches.

At Nassar’s sentencing, Larson, who had for a time been among the country’s best gymnasts, spoke at length about the torment of elite gymnastics — and how her coaches’ mistreatment had fueled Nassar’s abuse. Those responsible, she made clear, included Akopyan and Marinova.

“Who was I going to tell?” Larson testified. “Certainly not my coaches, who I was afraid of.”

THERE WAS A TIME, GYMNASTS SAY, when All Olympia was a different place.

It opened in 2000 under Marinova, a former Bulgarian gymnast who competed at the 1980 Olympics. She played music and allowed the girls to make up their own routines. In the summer, gymnasts said, there were workouts at the beach and ice cream on the way home. Championship banners accumulated on the walls.

But as the level of the gymnasts increased, so did the intensity. Marinova shunned college gymnastics, several gymnasts said, labeling those who went to the NCAA ranks as failures. Instead, she wanted gymnasts on the “elite” track, the sport’s demanding upper echelon that can eventually lead to the Olympics.

Akopyan joined All Olympia full time around 2004 to train Olympic hopefuls. He had been a groundbreaking and powerful vaulter for the Soviet Union, scoring three perfect 10s in the 1981 world championships, before he immigrated to the United States and began to coach vault for the USA Gymnastics national team.

Marinova was known for her ballet-like artistry, Akopyan for his power and technicality. Together, they demanded perfection: perfect conditioning, perfect lines and perfect appearance, which meant not wearing shorts, even during training. Their leotards were beautiful and elaborate, but their behavior, gymnasts said, was expected to be “robotic.”

“In my eyes, they were fricking geniuses,” said Veronica Hults, a former junior national team member who competed at All Olympia. They coached the way they did, Hults said, “because they saw the results it produced. … We were incredible.”

“Artur was like a god to me,” said another gymnast, who now competes in college. Like others, she spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid retribution in the tightknit world of competitive gymnastics. “When he loves you, you’re the most incredible, beautiful angel in the whole world.”

But when he was angry, Hults and other former gymnasts said, Akopyan could be terrifying.

“Artur would throw panel mats. He would squirt us with water bottles. He’d cuss at us if we made a mistake,” Hults said. “I hated it. I used every excuse in the book not to go to the gym. You’re constantly in fear.”

“Anything could happen” when Akopyan was angry, said Maguire Garcia, who left All Olympia in 2017. “He would grab the girls by their arms and throw them to the side, and it was scary.” When he spotted gymnasts, Garcia said: “You knew that if you made a mistake … you’re not coming down safely. You’re at his mercy.”

The skills the gymnasts were attempting at the highest levels were dangerous. But some women said that long before they should have practiced unassisted, they would sometimes take on skills alone rather than have Akopyan spot them.

“I felt like the risk of injury by myself was lower than him spotting me,” one former elite gymnast said. “Because if I didn’t do it the way he wanted, he would throw me.”

One gymnast, Desiree Palomares, recalled that when she was 11 or 12, she was playing a game with her teammates on the tumble track where the girls took turns trying to “stick” different skills. Akopyan scolded her for playing.

“Yes,” she remembered replying, “but it’s a sticking game.”

Akopyan slapped her across the face, said Palomares, who is now 29 and a public defender in Colorado. Another gymnast told The Post she was present during the incident and witnessed the immediate aftermath. At home, Palomares told her parents that Akopyan had slapped her.

“I was furious,” her father, Rene Palomares, told The Post. “I always knew he had a temper, and I’d seen how he mistreated some of the girls. I couldn’t believe he could do that.”

Rene Palomares said he went to the gym to confront Akopyan, who denied striking his daughter. He said Marinova ushered them into the break room, where Akopyan tried to fight him. Afterward, Rene Palomares and his wife debated what to do, he said, “because we also knew she was good at what she did.” They decided to send their daughter back to All Olympia, though she later moved to another gym.

“I wish I could have done things a lot differently, especially thinking about it now,” Rene Palomares said. “I think with a lot of parents, the fear was if they spoke up, that they’d damage their daughter’s opportunity to go to college.”

Los Angeles police later learned of Akopyan’s allegedly violent behavior. In November 2010, Akopyan came into the gym in a fit of anger, according to two gymnasts who were present, and began to target an 11-year-old girl during conditioning, forcing her to repeat a difficult handstand skill.

“He was screaming at her, ‘Now you have to do 10 more,’” one gymnast who witnessed the incident recalled.

When the girl began to sob, the gymnasts said, Akopyan demanded she stop crying. But she couldn’t. When she stood up, Akopyan grabbed the girl by the back of her neck and arm and dragged her across the floor so that her feet were briefly lifted off the ground, the gymnasts said. He threw her out of the gym and into the office, they said.

“It was like she was floating in the air because she was so tiny,” a gymnast said of watching Akopyan drag the girl out of the room.

The girl’s mother took her to the hospital, according to an emergency department discharge form reviewed by The Post, where doctors diagnosed her with a contusion on her upper arm. Photographs the mother provided to the police, which were also reviewed by The Post, show a red mark covering the back of the girl’s neck from her shoulders to the base of her ponytail.

Los Angeles police investigated, a police report shows, but Akopyan was referred to a diversion program instead of facing charges. The program, a city website says, is for misdemeanor “cases where a crime has been committed but prosecution may be inappropriate.” In Akopyan’s case, “no further action was taken” following a hearing, a city spokesperson said. The spokesperson would not provide any details.

The gymnast who was involved declined to comment on the record for this story. The Post does not name alleged victims of child abuse unless they ask to be named.

Not long after, Talitha Jones recalled, Akopyan stormed into the gym with an X-Acto-style blade and began to “hack away” at posters with the girl’s name on them. “He was just going crazy,” Jones said. “I’ll never forget that.”

Jones was one of many of Akopyan’s former gymnasts who said they believed he had come to the gym drunk in those years. They remembered finding cans of beer outside a garage-style door in the gym that opened to the outdoors, jokes he often made about Heineken and long periods when Akopyan would disappear and then return in a different mood. Many remembered the smell of beer on his breath — even if they did not recognize it at the time, they said, their older teammates explained it to them or they came to recognize it as adults. Freidin said she remembers telling a SafeSport investigator about Akopyan’s drinking.

Akopyan’s behavior did not change after the incident with police, four gymnasts said, but instead seemed to intensify. So, too, did gymnasts’ fear of him.

“A held breath,” Jones said. “That’s what it was in that gym at the time.”

As Akopyan’s behavior escalated, his athletes did what they could to protect themselves, gymnasts said. On her drives to practice with her parents, one gymnast remembered “hoping, wishing, praying that we would get into a car accident so we didn’t have to go.”

Garcia and three other gymnasts said they or their teammates remembered hiding from Akopyan’s anger in the bathroom, including two who described a girl locking herself in the bathroom and crying that she was afraid of him. Akopyan banged on the door until she opened it, they said. Garcia’s mother finally pulled her daughter out of the gym, she told The Post, after her daughter texted her a photograph of herself crying because of Akopyan.

Abigail DeShazo, now 24, said she witnessed, alongside Freidin, Akopyan throwing a young gymnast during an aerial flip. The image has remained with her for more than a decade, she said. But at the time, she said, her reaction was muted. “Retrospectively thinking about it, it was horrible,” she said. “But in the moment it was just, ‘We should do what we can to not be in that situation.’”

Gymnasts said they grew to dread Akopyan’s good moods along with his bad ones. Four women said they believed Akopyan acted inappropriately with them by patting or pinching their bottoms and commenting on their bodies in ways that made them uncomfortable, as children and even more acutely as adults. Three said they were made to hug Akopyan when they did not want to, often after a day in which he had hurt or berated them.

Akopyan had not been sexually abusive to them, they said. But the erosion of boundaries — and of their bodily autonomy — had a profound effect on them, they said. Being made to hug Akopyan, one former elite gymnast said, “was the most demeaning, disrespectful thing I had to do.”

“He made me feel violated,” Freidin said. “He made me feel icky in my body.”

THERE WERE THINGS about Marinova, too, that many gymnasts could never forget.

She had strict rules about food. Carrots were “yellow carbs”; grapes had “too much sugar”; chewing gum pumped air into your stomach. Water was often forbidden on the floor of the gym, multiple gymnasts said, in part because Marinova told them they would “bloat.”

One gymnast said she stopped drinking water altogether around age 10 “because I was afraid I would get fat” until her skin developed rough, dry patches that are a sign of chronic dehydration. Her parents tried to make her hydrate, she said, but she would pour water from her bottle into the trash to conceal that she was still not drinking.

There were also lessons about how to restrict food. If you want a bite of a cupcake, you can taste it and then spit it out, two gymnasts said Marinova told them when someone brought in birthday treats.

When practice ended late, DeShazo said Marinova would tell them she hoped they would be too tired to have dinner. “She’d say you wouldn’t feel the hunger if you went to sleep right away,” DeShazo said.

And then there were her judgments of their bodies. Marinova called young girls “fat,” four gymnasts said, and criticized their bodies constantly, warning them against weight gain and praising them when they lost weight, even when it was because of illness.

Several of the women believe Marinova’s lessons contributed to eating disorders they experienced later in life.

Gymnasts said they rarely doubted Marinova’s belief in them. But when they did not live up to her high standards, they said, she could be cruel, sometimes pinching them to get them to straighten or throwing objects in anger.

When Palomares was around 11, she said, Marinova took her to a competition in Texas without her parents. Palomares was injured, and she fell on the last pass of her floor routine. When she looked around for her coach’s approval, Marinova was nowhere to be found. Hours ticked by, Palomares recalled, and some parents had to stay behind to supervise her as the competition emptied out.

“She’d gone to the airport and left me there,” Palomares said.

Another gymnast’s mother eventually drove Palomares to the airport and got her to her gate, she said. The parent confirmed the incident to The Post. But even when she arrived there, Palomares said, Marinova would not speak to her.

The “silent treatment” could last for days or even weeks after a mistake, many gymnasts said. And Marinova and Akopyan also used it to punish gymnasts who were injured, many gymnasts said. Freidin recalled them forbidding her from talking to teammates who were sitting out with injuries, asking, “Do you want to be lazy like them?” When gymnasts fell and hurt themselves, gymnasts said, Marinova and Akopyan would often simply turn their backs and walk away.

“You’re on the floor, you’re bleeding or [something is] broken, and no one is tending to you,” Garcia said.

Leaving All Olympia, though, did not feel like an option.

“There was a huge stigma of ‘quitting’ and being a ‘quitter’ and not being able to handle it,” Garcia said. When girls left, she said, Akopyan and Marinova would criticize them personally: “They would say you were a weak person if you left.”

For many gymnasts, there was another factor at play: Their parents — even those who were aware of Akopyan’s physical abuse — wanted them to stay.

“I was depressed,” Palomares said. “But they didn’t want me to leave, because All Olympia was the gym to be at if you wanted to go to the Olympics.”

Her father said he regretted that he had missed signs of his daughter’s distress. Desiree was “tough,” Rene Palomares said, because “we raised our children to be tough.” But the more time she spent at All Olympia, he said, the more withdrawn she became. “I wish I’d known then what I know now,” Rene said.

“Don’t look the other way. Don’t be afraid to pull them out,” he said. “It does do a lot of psychological damage.”

AT THE 2012 OLYMPICS in London, with the Americans on the precipice of winning their first team gold medal since 1996, Maroney’s near-perfect vault earned her the highest score of any female gymnast at the Games. After she landed, the 16-year-old ran directly into Akopyan’s arms.

It was the latest in a string of high-profile wins for Akopyan and Marinova’s athletes, cementing All Olympia as one of the country’s ascendant gyms.

Four years later, as she announced her retirement in 2016, Maroney praised Akopyan and Marinova’s coaching on the GymCastic podcast. But they were, she said, part of why she was leaving the sport.

“Artur changed my gymnastics, and I’m so forever grateful for that,” she said. “But mentally, they just messed me up. Like, so badly. And I love them with all my heart, but to speak my truth would to just be like — to really say that it did affect me. And, again, there’s a better way of doing things.”

In response, Akopyan and Marinova were dismissive, even defiant. Akopyan told GymCastic that he had “heard a few things she said and stopped listening.” They could not, the coaches said, understand why Maroney would be critical of their coaching. She had, after all, won an Olympic medal.

A few months later, the Indianapolis Star broke the news of allegations of sexual abuse by Nassar. Maroney and Larson would eventually come forward as victims.

Larson did not respond to a request for comment through her attorney. But four gymnasts told The Post that Larson, who trained at All Olympia from the day it opened, was long one of the primary targets of Akopyan’s abuse. And when Larson sued Nassar and USA Gymnastics, she sued Akopyan and Marinova, too, accusing them of fueling an “abusive, harassing, and degrading environment” at All Olympia that had contributed to Nassar’s abuse. As a minor at the Karolyi Ranch facility, where Nassar abused her, Larson alleged she had been partially under the care of Marinova and Akopyan.

In court filings, Akopyan and Marinova said that they had not been aware of or responsible for Nassar’s conduct and that they had not owned the facilities where Larson was abused. They also argued that they were not responsible because Larson had “failed to mitigate damages” inflicted by Nassar.

After settling Larson’s suit, they announced they would close one gym location and step back from coaching. In their letter to parents, they wrote, “We believe that we are two of the greatest coaches in gymnastics.”

In 2020, Freidin read about the allegations against Maggie Haney, the coach who was suspended by USA Gymnastics for abuse, and thought immediately of her childhood at All Olympia. She wrote on Instagram in May 2020 that she, too, had endured “constant body shaming, pinching, throwing, yelling [and] degrading.”

Freidin said she hoped to get the same kind of justice that Haney’s gymnasts did. She went to SafeSport in 2020, emails she provided to The Post show, and gave investigators a list of people who might speak — including DeShazo, who said she had witnessed Akopyan throwing the gymnast. DeShazo said she does not remember being contacted by a SafeSport investigator. (SafeSport said in its statement that if a witness doesn’t hear from the center, “it’s generally due to our not having correct contact information.”)

In 2022, emails show, SafeSport closed the case administratively, ending its investigation. SafeSport has come under fire for high numbers of administrative closures, which allow the center to claim it has “resolved” a case while reserving the right to reopen the investigation if new evidence arises. When cases are administratively closed, governing bodies are prohibited, usually indefinitely, from conducting their own investigations because it would inhibit SafeSport’s ability to reopen a case.

The SafeSport investigator told Freidin that it could not substantiate her case, she said. Not enough women, he said, wanted to talk.

IT WAS PARENTS WHO BEGGED Marinova and Akopyan to return to coaching.

Nicole Grant’s daughter was thriving at All Olympia before it closed in 2018: “She looked at all the banners on the walls, all the trophies, all the national championship trophies all the way around the gym and around the lobby, and she was like, ‘Yeah, that’s what I want.’”

So the summer after the coaches stepped back, Grant said she called Marinova. “We said, ‘Will you take the kids back?’ And she did.”

The result was a revival, of sorts, for All Olympia. Though its new crop of gymnasts, who train at its location in Calabasas, still have not reached the heights of more than a decade ago, some have signed Division I scholarships and competed internationally. An annual competition co-hosted by the gym in Las Vegas drew more than 1,000 competitors in February.

“I never expected the program to be anything other than what it is,” Grant said: intense, highly competitive and demanding. For her daughter, who was a junior elite gymnast last year, that has been the perfect environment, she said. But that isn’t true for every child, she said.

“I’ve heard the complaints,” Grant said, and many of the parents fit into the same category: “They don’t want that level of intensity.”

Grant and two other parents whose daughters returned to All Olympia after its closure said they had never seen any physical or emotional abuse. They had never seen Akopyan appear inebriated or drink alcohol around children, they said.

Grant said she was “not discounting anyone or denying someone’s experience.” But she expressed doubts about the allegations against Akopyan, including that he had slapped a child.

“Every gym I’ve been in with them has cameras,” she said. “If that really happened, I mean, trust me — there would be letters to USA Gymnastics — which, we know those go nowhere. … But what about police?”

She was skeptical, too, she said, that parents would keep their children in a gym if they were aware of such behavior. “There’s absolutely no way if that was going on in the gym that I would have my child there,” she said.

FOR YEARS, FREIDIN ASSUMED SafeSport’s lack of findings meant she was alone. She tried to avoid following All Olympia on social media, she said, and hoped Akopyan was no longer coaching.

But then she saw the Instagram post of Akopyan with a young gymnast, gardening gloves on his hands.

Freidin is in recovery from an eating disorder, she said, after seeking inpatient treatment. But even now, small triggers take her back to the way she felt at All Olympia as a child — trapped and afraid. “I’ll see their cars, the same model they used to drive, and if it’s driving behind me, I’ve had to pull over,” Freidin said.

All of the women who spoke to The Post said they believed Akopyan should not be coaching children. Nor should Marinova, most said. And they were angry that no one had done anything to stop them.

“It makes me furious,” Garcia said. “The fact that they’re able to continue to operate and make money and profit is disgusting to me.”

Akopyan and Marinova “are not going to change unless they have some spiritual or religious awakening,” Jones said. “And there haven’t been enough precautions or measures taken to ensure that this doesn’t happen again.”

Some former gymnasts said they believed their parents, too, bore some of the responsibility for what happened to them in the gym.

“Unfortunately for all of us that were training at that gym, our parents knew exactly what was happening,” said one of the gymnasts who witnessed the 2010 dragging incident that was investigated by police. “Everybody knew, but they still brought their kids to that gym.”

“Why?” she said, before answering her own question: “Because everybody was winning.”

Gus Garcia-Roberts in Los Angeles and Emily Giambalvo in Washington contributed to this report.

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Long after Nassar scandal, gymnastics coaches accused of abuse remain

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