Sean Gardner, a former gymnastics coach at Chow’s Gymnastics and Dance Institute in West Des Moines, Iowa, has been arrested on child pornography charges.

The US gymnastics world was only just recovering from a devastating sexual abuse scandal when a promising young coach moved from Mississippi to Iowa to take a job in 2018 at an elite academy known for training Olympic champions.

A former gymnastics coach who was first accused of abuse more than three years ago has been arrested on federal child porn charges. Sean Gardner, 38, made his first court appearance Friday on a charge of producing visual depictions of minors engaging in sexually explicit conduct.