I didn't get to read the article, but based on the comments apparently some sort of abuse happened. I have a dear friend in Ca. that has had a gymnastics gym for around 30 or so years. She is so dedicated to it and absolutely loves the kids. She is a kind and gentile person, but if something like that were to happen in her gym, I would fear for the life of the person guilty of it! I don't think she would be able to contain herself! And rightly so!
“Perry tickled you,” Woodbury said. “I was pinned down and tickled by Perry.
“He would pin us down and make our friends hold us down. He would lay you down on your back. Someone would hold you down, he’d sit on your legs and tickled you.”
Shikuma provided USA Gymnastics with a similar account.
“Perry used to pin the girls down and tickle them all the time. He’d make the teammates pin their friend down – one girl would hold the arms, one girl would hold the legs and he would have full access to tickle her,” Shikuma said. “The girls would try to stand up for one another and say they wouldn’t hold their friend down. But then he’d threaten that if they didn’t they’d be next. So the girls would reluctantly hold their friend down as he tickle tortured them. The girl being tickled would laugh and laugh and laugh, and scream stop, stop, stop, as she continued to laugh. Her friends would try to let go but he told them to keep holding her down. He wasn’t done yet. Then, Safe Sport came about and said that coaches were no longer allowed to tickle their gymnasts.
“One of the girls … started getting tickled and, after hearing the coaches talking about Safe Sport rules, started yelling out ‘Safe Sport! Safe Sport!’ as she was being tickled by Perry. He tickled her even more until she eventually got free. And in that moment, she had learned that Perry was above it all. No Safe Sport rule could stop him. He was above it all. I will say, that the tickling slowed down quite a bit but there were still times where he would tickle the girls even after that rule was set.”
Davies said he tried to lighten the mood in the gym.
“We tried to play games, have fun,” he said when asked about the tickling allegations not directly addressing the charges. “Because gymnastics is a really hard sport.”
Woodbury, however, didn’t find the tickling fun.
“I was small,” she said. “That (expletive) hurt. It was uncomfortable. It was brutal. It hurt.
“I always thought it was weird. He’s a dad to two girls. Everyone should have known better.”