Canada Gymnasts Break Silence On Abuses And Sport's "Toxic Culture"

They excelled in the athletic spotlight, but their feats on the beam and bars masked a darker reality: Canadian gymnasts are taking legal action to denounce a "toxic" culture of physical, sexual and psychological abuse by the sport's top brass. Having tolerated the harm for decades, victims around the world have come forward in the wake of a US gymnastics scandal that broke in 2015 before spreading abroad, including to Britain where athletes launched a similar legal action last year.

As a child gymnast in Vancouver, Amelia Cline dreamed of Olympic glory. In her teens, the elite athlete devoted thirty hours a week to training.

"Unfortunately the early years of my gymnastics days, as positive as they were, they've been somewhat wiped out by those last three years that were so brutal," the former gymnast, now 32, told AFP.

She and other athletes on Wednesday filed a lawsuit against Gymnastics Canada and several provincial federations for tolerating a climate of abuse and mistreatment for decades.

"The lawsuit is essentially designed to hopefully hold these institutions accountable for systemic psychological, emotional, physical and sexual violence," she said.

At the end of March, a group of more than 70 present and former gymnasts published an open letter to Sports Canada denouncing a "toxic culture and abusive practices that persist within Canadian gymnastics."

The number of signatories has since grown to more than 400, with the group calling for an independent investigation to shed light on the sport's problems.

The "general public really doesn't understand the magnitude of the abuses that are occurring at the gyms," said Kim Shore, a former gymnast and spokeswoman for Gymnast For Change Canada, who says her daughter has