Former Australian and world champion junior rock climbers allege they were sexually abused by their coach

By the time Libby Hall was 15 she was a junior world champion.

It was 2005. She'd competed on TV as part of the X-Games and had been invited to China to exhibit her exciting sport: rock climbing.

Videos of her from back then show a smiling, vivacious young girl dangling on the end of ropes in the Blue Mountains, or scrambling up indoor rock-climbing walls. She's in her element.

In the early 2000s, rock climbing was evolving from an outdoor pastime to a fully fledged indoor sport attracting elite athletic talent.

Hall was the prototype – she was young, strong, flexible and a former gymnast.

«I just loved it,» she says.

«It was something exhilarating about being up on a wall hanging upside down, using the flexibility that I still had from gymnastics.»

Hall is 31 now. If things had gone differently, she might have become an Olympian when rock climbing made its debut at last year's Tokyo Games.

There's no question she's made a success of her life: she has just been head-hunted for a new job, has built a house, and sailed around the world with her husband.

Yet, there's a part of her that is buried in darkness.

She's taken no joy in her former sport making it to the Olympic stage.

«Because what came with it was dark. It was pain, and it still is,» she says.

«I don't get to look back at climbing and see the success that I had.

»I look back and it's traumatic and it hurts."

Warning: This story contains details of child sexual abuse which may disturb some readers.

Hall was one of many young girls who were scarred by their experiences in elite gymnastics.

An Australian Human Rights Commission review into gymnastics found the sport had enabled a culture of abuse, predominantly against young women.

These children were vulnerable when they left the