Thank you, Madam Chair.
I started gymnastics at the age of three, bouncing off the walls and making my first national team at 11. Since then, I have competed at four world age group championships and at world cups, won the Pan American Championships twice and competed at two world championships.
When I was 15 and 16, I was sexually abused by someone I thought was a national team therapist, doping control officer—the person who watches you urinate while drug testing—and international judge. A few of these experiences are—and I apologize for the language I'm going to use—his telling me that the next time he saw me, I'd better have “my legs, armpits and asshole shaved”; his refusing to give me ice unless he treated my groin, where he told me to “move my dick or he could move it for me” and then put his hand up my gym suit and underwear and groped my genitals twice, only to tell me to ice them; and his telling me and my teammates about his Prince Albert piercing and how long he couldn't have sex for after having it done.
In 2013, his contract with GymCan was “not renewed”, and he went on to work out of a clinic at a gymnastics club, marketing his false qualifications.
In 2019, my coach tried to report to GymCan but was told the matter was no longer in its jurisdiction. I spent a year trying to figure out what professional designation this man actually had. Originally, we were led to believe he was a physiotherapist; he was not. We were then told that he was an athletic therapist, and he hadn't held that designation since 2002.
Ultimately, I lodged a complaint with CCES, which demanded that GymCan do an investigation. I spoke with Gretchen Kerr, who had been the GymCan welfare officer for the past 30 years. I went without an update for 10 months. Finally, she shared with me that four other individuals had come forward detailing their experiences with this man. Kerr's report made no recommendations for sanction or discipline. Instead, I and the others were told to report this matter to the college of massage therapists. We were surprised to discover that this man, who was sent across the world as medical support staff, was merely a massage therapist. This man was never sanctioned by GymCan.
In July 2021, I put out a post on social media saying I had been sexually abused and that my reporting experience with GymCan left me feeling more broken than the abuse itself. Two days later, I was asked to have a call with Ms. Kerr in which she asked me, “Why are you so mad at Gymnastics Canada?” She claimed that I had never filed a formal complaint, so I had no reason to be upset, and that if I was careful about what I posted, she would ensure there would be an outcome that both she and I would be happy with.
After this call with Ms. Kerr, I started planning how to take my own life: the friend I would drop my dog off to while I claimed I needed to go out of town for the weekend, the air conditioning hose I would take to siphon the exhaust from my car into my vehicle, the empty Edmonton transit parking lot I would park in after hours, and the delayed email I would send to my family of where they could find my body.
My call with Gretchen was the ultimate loss of hope. The organization that my family and I entrusted with my physical and mental well-being for two decades could not even do the bare minimum to investigate my case unless forced, and then attempted to silence me.
Finally, 15 years after my abuse, this man signed an undertaking with the massage college for three counts of sexual abuse and agreed to give up his licence “in the best interest of the public”. I have now connected with 19 others who have had sexually abusive experiences with this man.
The recent McLaren report stated that 83% of respondents had a positive experience in gymnastics. I do not disagree with that statistic because the irony of my story is that 99% of my gymnastics experience has been exceptional.
We can hold two truths: that the sport is incredibly important to many of us and that there is a culture in Canadian sport rife with abuse, complicity and enabling that can only begin to be solved by a national inquiry. There were many nights where I felt broken beyond repair. I was not broken by sport; I was abused in sport and broken by the system. As MP Duncan said, it should not take years of therapy to recover from a career in sport; the cost is too high.
Today you will hear multiple examples about a researcher entrenched in the sports system who's influencing the direction of safe sport at every level. Now with an opportunity to support a national inquiry, Gretchen Kerr opposes it. A researcher who doesn't want anyone else to look more closely at corruption in sport, she has said that she already knows everything that anybody needs to know about fixing the sports system, but she doesn't declare a single one of her conflicts of interest. She gets paid millions of dollars to do research on abuse in sport. Her Ph.D. student is the president of AthletesCAN, which appointed Gretchen as its case manager. Gretchen has been the welfare officer at GymCan for over 30 years. She has been in a position to make gymnastics better for 30 years and yet here we are.
This is not the case of a few bad apples and a few people who have enabled them. This is a systemic human rights and abuse crisis across the entire sports system. While we are grateful for the opportunity to share lived experiences in a forum such as this, we are barely scratching the surface of this problem. This is just one of the inappropriate and abusive experiences I have encountered in gymnastics over my career.
It is the height of arrogance to say we already know everything. We call for a national inquiry that can compel testimony and unravel the complexities of funding, conflicts of interest and corruption.
Thank you.