Li’s judging assignment isn’t the first time USA Gymnastics has been
the subject of controversy for awarding her a high-profile position. Li was selected by the USA Gymnastics Athletes Council in June 2019 to join the 10-member group that represents athletes with the governing body’s board of directors. Athletes Council members are essentially the voice of athletes with USA Gymnastics. Members of the council share concerns of athletes with the national governing body. Li’s selection came around the same time USA Gymnastics began looking into allegations against Li and Wu.
Li resigned from the council under pressure on the eve of the USA Gymnastics Championships in August 2019. USA Gymnastics chief executive officer Li Li Leung at the same competition denied to reporters that the organization was aware of complaints against Li and Wu prior to Li being named to the Athletes Council in June 2019.
But emails obtained by SCNG in 2019 contradicted Leung’s claims.
Mark Busby, then USA Gymnastics general counsel, and Toby R. Stark, then the organization’s director for Safe Sport confirmed in a series of September 2017 emails that
USA Gymnastics had received allegations of “verbal, physical and emotional abuse” against Li and Wu.
Multiple parents have also told SCNG that they first filed complaints about Li and Wu with USA Gymnastics in 2014.
At least 15 individuals filed formal complaints against Li and Wu with SafeSport in a case with approximately 50 witnesses. Several other gymnasts and their families have told SCNG they declined to cooperate or stopped cooperating with the investigation because of SafeSport’s lack of responsiveness or out of fear that Li would not be fair in judging gymnasts at national or regional competitions or that she would speak negatively about athletes to college coaches.
Gymnasts and their parents have also expressed frustration about what they have described as the U.S. Center for SafeSport’s lack of urgency and professionalism in investigating the case, criticism that has been echoed throughout the sport and on Capitol Hill.
Athletes and parents said it has taken SafeSport up to six months to respond to emails, texts or phone calls, if investigators responded at all. Scanlon told SCNG last spring that she hasn’t heard from SafeSport officials in four years. Scanlon recalled how SafeSport asked to interview her daughter and then failed to follow up.
“It’s really a faulty system,” Milbrandt said. “I don’t think the families should have to wait almost six years for the decision to be made.
“Most of us tried to put this behind us and to try and move on and that’s what we were forced to do.
“The system is just a mess.”
Libby Bailey, SafeSport’s assistant director of investigations, on Monday emailed athletes and parents the case “to let you know that decisions on the Legacy Elite investigation will be issued tomorrow.” The athletes and parents would also receive links to documents that detailed the Center’s findings, Bailey wrote.But Tuesday came and went without SafeSport releasing anything.
“We had a request to delay the issuance by one day, and based on the nature of that request, we believed it was trauma-informed and appropriate to grant it,” Bailey wrote a frustrated Legacy parent Tuesday night.
“It’s been almost six years and you’re delaying it one day?” Milbrandt said.
The delay fit an all too familiar and anxiety-raising pattern by SafeSport throughout the investigation, gymnasts and parents said.
In a February 12 email to complainants, Bailey wrote, “thank you for your continued patience during the process. The Investigation Report has moved under the final phase of review and when complete you will receive a Notice Decision and the full Report.”
But Bailey also said in the email she was not able to provide “an approximate date” when the report review would be completed.
The February email came 2½ years after Bailey in July 2021 wrote to former gymnasts and their parents that SafeSport was in “the process of drafting the comprehensive final report” in the Li and Wu investigation.
“We ask that you continue to be patient as we work through the information gathered in the investigation,” Bailey wrote in a July 19, 2021, email to gymnasts and parents. “We will continue to provide updates as they become available.”
Gymnasts and their parents allege that Li disparaged gymnasts in front of their peers on a “daily basis,” regularly called girls fat, pressured injured athletes to train or compete, and threatened to make negative comments to college coaches recruiting them if they struggled in training, were unable to train or compete because of injuries or illness, or appeared in Li’s opinion overweight, according to interviews with multiple gymnasts and parents and U.S. Center for SafeSport and USA Gymnastics documents.
Li was also selected to judge the balance beam at the Olympic Trials. It’s the same apparatus that Scanlon alleges Wu pulled her 10-year-old daughter off of by her hair to the floor when the girl didn’t perform a skill to her satisfaction.
“Jiani yanked her off the high beam, pulled her to the ground, grabbed her by the arm and dragged her to some mats and then sat on her back,” Scanlon said. “I was there. I saw it. I was stupid. I didn’t know what to do. We should have left (the club) that day. We left a month later.”
Wu on multiple occasions pulled young gymnasts by their hair when she was dissatisfied with their training, including at least one occasion when Wu allegedly pulled a girl by her ponytail all the way to the ground, according to interviews and multiple complaints submitted to U.S. Center for SafeSport and USA Gymnastics.
“Hair was pulled and girls were constantly body-shamed,” a parent wrote in a formal complaint to SafeSport and USA Gymnastics.
Another parent in a complaint with SafeSport and USA Gymnastics said she witnessed “hair pulling under the guise of physical coaching.”
Another complaint alleges a “child had tape placed over (her) mouth for 2 hours” by the coaches.
Once Wu pushed gymnast Riley Milbrandt while she was doing a handstand, sending her crashing into a balance beam, according to a complaint and interviews. Milbrandt was once forced to stand against the wall by herself for two hours as punishment and told she would not be coached or talked to by the coaches, according to interviews and a complaint. Wu told the other gymnasts in Milbrandt’s training group they would also be forced to stand against the wall if they spoke to their teammate, according to a SafeSport document.
Girls were made to sit in an inflatable pool toy in the corner of the gym as punishment if Li or Wu thought they were not working hard or not making corrections, according to multiple interviews and complaints.
Gymnasts were forced by Li and Wu to train and compete while injured, according to multiple complaints.
“Coaches thought they were above the doctors,” one parent alleged in a complaint to SafeSport. “They told the girls that they know more than the doctors do because of the length of time they have been in the sport. They said they never needed lists from doctors, that they knew how to manage all injuries. Therapy lists were torn up and thrown in the garbage.”
Judges who have worked with Li on judging panels or judged competitions sponsored by Legacy or involving Legacy athletes, as well as gymnasts and their parents, said they are also frustrated and outraged by SafeSport’s refusal to place Li and Wu on interim suspension despite multiple complaints that the coaches have allegedly continued to abuse and intimidate gymnasts and judges since the Center took jurisdiction over the case in 2019, according to interviews and confidential complaints filed with SafeSport.
Li tried to intimidate a former Legacy gymnast at an Illinois meet in March 2021, nearly two years after SafeSport began its investigation of Li and Wu, according to complaints and documents submitted to SafeSport. The gymnast and her mother have filed complaints with SafeSport alleging physical, verbal and emotional abuse by Li and Wu, according to SafeSport documents and interviews.
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