Judge Rosemarie Aquilina says gymnasts are still being failed at World Championships in Rotterdam
Judge Rosemarie Aquilina told activists and survivors in Rotterdam at the World Gymnastics Championships on 19 October 2026 that, ten years after Larry Nassar’s crimes emerged, there has been little meaningful change in protecting gymnasts. Survivors and campaigners gathered at the event to press for more substantive reforms to safeguarding within the sport.
Aquilina, who sentenced Nassar in 2018 to up to 175 years in jail for the sexual abuse of more than 250 women and girls, criticised the pace and scale of reform since the case became public. She noted that she had insisted on all 169 impact statements being heard at Nassar’s sentencing and joined activists from Gymnasts for Change International (G4CI) in Rotterdam to question why systems remain unchanged. The gathering was timed to coincide with the World Championships while the governing body prepares for a leadership change.
“Nassar was 10 years ago and there have been very few changes that are meaningful,” Aquilina said, adding: “I’m not looking for little changes that a lot of people get credit for, I want meaningful change, a lot of meaningful changes, and we’re just not there yet, not in sports, not in life, not in the courtroom, not in the classroom or in the legislature.” She asked why progress has stalled and answered: “I have to ask why? It’s the same answer: it’s money, medals and notoriety over the safety of children and safety is a human right.”
Claire Heafford, a survivor of abuse in the sport and the chief executive of G4CI, told the gathering: “We’re still in a place where survivors aren’t being listened to and where the scale of the reform hasn’t met the scale of the revelations.” Heafford characterised the resistance to change as “institutional fear, blinkeredness, and the fact that people who work in sport are not very creative,” and warned that those inside structured hierarchies find it “incredibly difficult” to effect reform when met with resistance from above.
Minky Worden of Human Rights Watch said some progress can be measured in athlete voice, whistleblower protections and the existence of safeguarding rules, but that implementation has lagged. “On the one hand, you can measure progress in athlete voice and advocacy, in some whistleblower protections, in safeguarding rules across sport – though the rules are there, but the implementation is not,” she said, and added: “I’ve interviewed hundreds of survivors in about 50 sports, winter and summer. Ten years on, just the scale and the severity and the duration of the abuses by the so-called Olympic doctor Larry Nassar caused a reckoning across sport. But the reckoning often took the wrong shape, it took the shape of defence.”
Eloise Jotischky, the former elite acrobatic gymnast who won the first civil case against British Gymnastics for abuse she said she suffered between 2016 and 2018, said policy change has outpaced enforcement. “There’s still a lot to be done. For example, British Gymnastics have come out with a number of policies, they’ve got their hydration policies, they’ve got their weight management policies. That’s brilliant, but let’s implement them. It’s the implementation that matters because if you don’t implement them and if you’re not monitoring them then what’s the point?” she said.
Kim Shore of Gymnasts for Change Canada, a survivor and independent safe sport advocate, urged World Gymnastics to adopt and enforce cultural reforms at the global level. “There’s a crisis of abuse across sport in Canada and yet we’ve seen really no reform and I would say that same lack of action, that same apathy is happening at World Gymnastics,” she said, adding that the governing body could set binding standards: “They could post new rules anywhere that say: ‘No more weighing of gymnasts. No more gymnasts returning to competition without a doctor’s note. No more coaches moving from one country to another country, if you’re banned in the US, you can’t just take a gymnast from Mexico to the Olympics.’” She argued that such signals from the top would help national federations enforce change: “If World Gymnastics would come out with a whole list of cultural reforms and started to normalise those within the national federations and then give them backing so that the national federations can go to the clubs all the way down to grassroots, I think we would see faster reform and less resistance.”
The timing of the Rotterdam meeting coincides with a leadership transition at World Gymnastics: Nicolas Buompane is due to step down as secretary general at the end of the year, creating an opportunity for policy direction at the governing body. World Gymnastics, USA Gymnastics, Gymnastics Canada and British Gymnastics have been contacted for comment.