G4CI RESPOND TO BG’s REFORM 25 REPORT
Gymnasts for Change International Press Release: 17 July 2025
“Safeguarding’s Over-Reliance on Children to Report Harm Is Fundamentally Flawed and Ethically Indefensible” Claire Heafford, CEO G4CI
Gymnasts for Change International (G4CI), a UK-registered human rights charity, has issued a stark warning in response to British Gymnastics’ Reform 25 Report. While G4CI recognises steps taken since the Whyte Review, including new policies, leadership changes, and athlete-facing reforms, it finds the current safeguarding system still places an unjust and unsustainable burden on children to report their own abuse.
“Safeguarding systems must not rely on children to detect harm. The current model is not
just ineffective - it is ethically indefensible,” said Claire Heafford, CEO of G4CI.
Despite positive developments, like the Safe and Fair Sport Strategy, and clearer athlete selection processes for international competitions - BG’s reforms have yet to translate into lived, everyday improvements in safety for children in gyms across the UK. As a campaign group G4CI remain deeply concerned about the ongoing gap between policy and practice, particularly at the club level where poor and abusive practices continue to persist, unchallenged, at clubs across the UK. According to G4CI, the slow pace of change reflects not only implementation challenges but the deep-rooted cultural problems that have shaped gymnastics for decades. Reform requires more than policy—it demands meaningful cultural transformation, consistent enforcement through coach sanctions, and leadership with the courage to challenge entrenched norms.
Children Remain at Risk Under a Broken System
G4CI’s latest Benchmarking Report compares the outcomes of Reform 25 against its 77-point Call for Change document, co-authored by over 60 athlete-advocates in 2021. The findings reveal systemic failure to implement early detection tools, enforce meaningful sanctions, or provide transparent information for parents and athletes. Having tracked British Gymnastics’ reform process for two years, G4CI now believes that children remain at risk because the safeguarding system itself is fundamentally broken. BG currently oversees child protection cases in which it holds a clear conflict of interest: BG both receives safeguarding concerns and investigates complaints from it’s athlete members, and is at the same time responsible for protecting the coaching rights of coaches, who are also BG members.
This dual role creates systemic bias. Safeguarding officers are tasked with both supporting complainants and defending the coaches’ right to coach. As a result, the bar for evidence is set too high, complainants and whistleblowers are often treated as though they are not believed, and an institutional culture persists that prioritises a coach’s right to remain in the sport over a child’s right to be safe. Three years on from the Whyte Review, how can it be that athletes who have experienced harm are still being driven out of gymnastics, while the coaches who abused them remain in place? This reversal of justice is not just unacceptable; it is a direct consequence of a safeguarding model designed to protect the system as much as the children within it.
“As long as British Gymnastics represents both coaches and athletes within its membership, this conflict of interest will persist. There is an urgent need for the UK Government to support the creation of an Independent Ombudsman for Sport,” said Fiona McGettrick, G4CI Advocate. “This will allow survivors and victims to be represented at case panels by case officers who are not invested in the coach’s right to coach.”
These conclusions have been drawn by G4CI following ongoing monitoring of British Gymnastics’ Reform 25 process, maintaining regular dialogue with the organisation, and supporting scores of athletes and parents who continue to try to raise the alarm regarding coaches of concern who remain active in the sport. As G4CI members have attempted to navigate flawed reporting systems and opaque complaint procedures, a clear pattern has emerged: safeguarding, as it is currently designed, asks the most vulnerable people in the system to carry the full burden of disclosure.
“This isn’t about bad apples,” said Heafford. “It’s about a structural failure to monitor environments, detect risks, and protect children before abuse happens. That’s the standard in schools. It must be the standard in sport.”
Instead, a proactive safeguarding system must include early detection tools, such as risk ratings, detailed membership surveys tracking patterns of red flag behaviours and indicators, anonymous reporting and regular, unannounced spot checks. Although such mechanisms have been proposed in various forums, they are yet to be implemented in full. This delay suggests a lack of either capability or will. A further lack of transparency within the ICP, justified by GDPR, combined with British Gymnastics’ ongoing refusal to publish a meaningful, banded list of sanctioned individuals, means that abusive coaches remain active in the sport. As a result, children are still at risk, and parents have no way of knowing whether the coach working with their child has previously been reported or sanctioned by British Gymnastics.
Five years on from when initial complaints were submitted to the Whyte Review, the ICP has become a tool to delay justice, used as an excuse to obstruct civil claims and deflect accountability. Coaches accused of serious harm have faced few, if any, consequences, while survivors have been re-traumatised by a process that has, in effect, branded them as liars. Instead of delivering truth or resolution, the ICP has served to protect the institution and those within it, at the direct expense of those it was meant to serve.
Key Recommendations for Reform
G4CI is calling for urgent action, including:
• Separate Coach Representation from Athlete Protection
End British Gymnastics’ dual role of representing both coaches and athletes. Safeguarding processes must not be compromised by obligations to defend a coach’s right to work.
• Reform Evidence Thresholds and Complaints Handling
Redesign safeguarding procedures to reduce overly high evidence thresholds and ensure whistleblowers and complainants are treated with credibility and care through implementation of a new coaching code of conduct and coach contract, that explicitly states what coaching behaviours constitute abuse.
• Pressurise UK Government to create an Independent Complaint Mechanism for Sport
Remove the conflict of interest for British Gymnastics by creating an independent ombudsman or independent complaints mechanism, separate from British Gymnastics, to handle child protection cases and complaints. British Gymnastics must end safeguarding practices that discredit complainants by applying narrow ‘balance of probabilities’ tests while rarely issuing sanctions proportionate to harm caused.
• Create a Public Register of Sanctioned Coaches
British Gymnastics must publish a centralised, publicly accessible list of coaches who have been sanctioned for safeguarding violations, to ensure parents and athletes can make informed choices following the model adopted by UK Athletics.
• Remove Abusive Coaches From the Sport
British Gymnastics must lower the threshold for removing abusive coaches. Many coaches named in legal actions remain active, while the athletes they harmed have left the sport.
• Reform Complaint Handling & Engage Survivors
British Gymnastics must centre athlete-survivors in reshaping safeguarding procedures, and hire trauma-informed and paediatric-informed specialists to overhaul how child victims are supported through complaints processes.
• Implement Proactive Safeguarding Measures
Introduce early detection tools including: Risk ratings and red flag systems, detailed, anonymous membership surveys to track patterns of concern and implement regular, unannounced spot checks of clubs and training environments
• Ensure Accountability for Lost Complaints
British Gymnastics must make public how paperwork and safeguarding complaints were “lost” over many years, as revealed in the Whyte Review, and take transparent restorative steps toward justice.
• Support Legislative Reform
G4CI calls on the UK Government to extend coercive control laws to include abusive coaching practices, and to introduce child protection laws tailored to sport settings.
• Improve Local Authority Safeguarding Training
LADOs and child protection staff must receive nationally accredited training in recognising abuse within sport, especially in disciplines like gymnastics.
• Acknowledge the failure of the Independent Complaints Process
Publicly acknowledge the failure of the Independent Complaint Process and provide appropriate support to survivors who have been unforgivably re-traumatised by the Sports Resolutions administrated process.
• Deliver Justice in Civil Claims
British Gymnastics must resolve all outstanding civil claims brought by athletes, and acknowledge the harm caused regardless of the outcome of unresolved ICP cases. These recommendations reflect the clear message from athletes, parents, and survivors: Piecemeal reform is not enough. British Gymnastics must lead a transformation that wins over the hearts and minds of coaches and clubs around the UK. Only by fully acknowledging past and current failures, can the leadership team at British Gymnastics take meaningful steps to rebuild trust within the gymnastics community.
A Culture of Prevention, Not Re-traumatisation
To rebuild trust and ensure safety, the sport must shift from a culture of re-traumatising whistleblowers and complainants, to a preventative safeguarding model - one rooted in data, transparency, and community accountability. British Gymnastics staff and coaches must be trained in trauma-informed practice, clubs must be regularly monitored, and the safeguarding system must no longer depend on the bravery of children to sound the alarm.
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Claire@gymnastsforchange.com