The 5-year-old was the most skilled, most flexible girl in her training group at Azarian U.S. Gymnastics Training Center, a world-renowned gym in Orange County.
To Rena Shikuma, her coach, the girl was an obvious choice to move up to a more advanced group last November. Vanessa Gonzalez, Azarian’s head girls coach, however, opposed the move even before the girl could try out for the next level, Shikuma said.
“She was ‘too fat and too ugly’ according to Vanessa,” Shikuma recalled in a formal complaint to USA Gymnastics, the sport’s national governing body.
Shikuma persisted. Gonzalez wouldn’t budge.
“‘The judges won’t like her look. Plus, there’s no way we’re going to be able to spot her when she gets older because she’ll be too fat,’” Gonzalez continued, according to Shikuma in the USA Gymnastics complaint. “She laughed, and walked away. I stood there FUMING inside. My insides were turning red from anger that she could judge a person solely on the way they look and not by how they perform. That was my last straw.”
Three months later, Shikuma went on maternity leave, never to return to Azarian.
In July, Shikuma filed a more than 5,000-word complaint with USA Gymnastic detailing the repeated alleged physical, verbal and emotional abuse of young female gymnasts by certain Azarian coaches over an eight-year period.
“I’m not going to take it any longer,” Shikuma said in an interview with the Orange County Register. “I can’t stand by and watch these kids continue to go through what they’ve been going through.”
In the previously unreleased, confidential complaint obtained by the Register during a three-month investigation as well as a series of interviews, Shikuma, 38, is not only critical of other Azarian coaches but also acknowledges her own mistreatment of gymnasts and how her career suffered when she ultimately rejected the abusive coaching methods of some other coaches in the gym.
“From my start date of Feb. 7, 2012, to my end date of Feb. 1, 2020, I have witnessed horrific mental, verbal and physical child abuse at Azarian Gymnastics,” Shikuma wrote in the complaint to USA Gymnastics. “As a coach being trained there, I was told to do awful things to the kids I am not proud of. I thought that it was okay and now I realize it’s not. 4 years ago I stopped being abusive to the kids and got silently and slowly demoted because of it. By the end of my career there I was barely able to coach pre-competitive kids because I was too friendly.”
Shikuma’s complaint is one of ten formal complaints against Azarian coaches filed with USA Gymnastics obtained by the Register. The complaints – along with dozens of interviews with gymnasts and their parents, Azarian and USA Gymnastics emails, letters and memos as well as medical records and therapist’s reports – reveal a pattern where some Azarian coaches allegedly routinely physically, emotionally and verbally abused, bullied and belittled, and pressured young female gymnasts to continue training and/or competing while injured.
Shikuma, in particular, singles out Gonzalez and Perry Davies, the former Azarian head girls coach, for not only allegedly abusing gymnasts but other coaches as well.
“We hated it. All of us,” Shikuma wrote in her complaint. “We were constantly bullied by them to be harder on the kids. The unspoken rule in that gym during conditioning is that if someone wasn’t crying, you weren’t doing your job correctly. When Perry would walk by and see kids crying, he’d smile at the coach.”
USA Gymnastics suspended Gonzalez, Davies and Amanda Hensley, an Azarian girls team coach, on an interim basis on Sept. 4 and prohibited them from having any contact with gymnasts pending the completion of an investigation of the coaches.
USA Gymnastics has jurisdiction over emotional misconduct, bullying, hazing, physical misconduct and retaliation related to safe sport complaints involving affiliated members or gyms. The U.S. Center for SafeSport has jurisdiction over cases involving sexual misconduct, sexual harassment, grooming, and child abuse within Olympic sports in this country.
Under USA Gymnastics policy, “if a report indicates an immediate danger or threat to the gymnastics community, USA Gymnastics may impose interim measures, including suspension for the duration of the investigation.
“The coaches are prohibited from ‘all contact’ with gymnasts under the terms of the suspension” as is the case with Gonzalez, Davies and Hensley.
A hearing on the case scheduled for earlier this month was postponed by USA Gymnastics in part because of the volume of additional complaints filed after the publication of a Register investigation of the gym, according to three people familiar with the investigation.
“I’ve always tried my very best to take care of the kids, to make sure they were in a safe environment,” Davies said in an interview earlier this month. “I would never do anything to hurt a kid. So I’m flabbergasted. I categorically deny doing anything harmful to a kid.”
Gonzalez and Davies said they were unaware of the allegations against them before they were reported by the Register earlier this month. Azarian employees and representatives also said they were not aware of the allegations before the Register report.
Davies and Gonzalez also said in emails they were required last week by USA Gymnastics to sign non-disclosure agreements regarding the allegations. USA Gymnastics emails and texts obtained by the Register confirm the non-disclosure agreements.
“We signed a non disclosure with USAG,” Davies wrote “they would not proceed without it . No agreement, no hearing. I guess this is standard. The disclosure was signed to get the actual allegations which we got this week.”
Gonzalez has declined multiple interview requests. In response to an email detailing specific allegations raised in this report, Gonzalez wrote in an email: “Thank you for reaching out and your willingness to hear our side. As you must already know, we signed a non-disclosure earlier this week which prevents us from discussing any of the allegations or claimants. I am however, hopeful that there will be a time where we can sit down and I can respond to all your questions.”
Gonzalez did issue a statement earlier this month through Susan Siljander, an Azarian parent who said she is handling communications for the gym. Hensley also did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
“We have always tried to address all gymnast concerns immediately. We have used our team captains to help facilitate the communication between athletes and coaches many times.” Gonzalez said in the statement. “Perry and I held meetings with the girls and listened when they had concerns. We then decided an appropriate response based on the complaint. When the parents have complaints, I listen to them, think on them, get more information, and then respond. Concerns of gymnasts are not dismissed at Azarian.”
The confrontation with Gonzalez over the promotion of the 5-year-old girl almost led to her dismissal, Shikuma said.
“The few times I stood up to the head coach Vanessa Gonzalez and told her it wasn’t right for her to judge a girl by her looks, I almost got fired,” Shikuma wrote her complaint. “One day she pointed at my chest, looked me directly in the eyes and told me in a stern voice, ‘You will do what you’re told. And when those parents find out their kid hasn’t made team, you are not allowed to go speak to them. You are not allowed to tell them why. You work for Perry and I and you will do what you’re told.”
There was a short period before “I was out on maternity leave,” Shikuma wrote, “and I vowed to never go back there again.”
While the final confrontation with Gonzalez pointed Shikuma toward the exit, she said her path out of Azarian and to becoming a whistleblower started during a 2017 therapy session.
Shikuma was receiving therapy to address her upbringing in a religious cult. But as the trauma counselor detailed tactics used by cults to control their members, Shikuma came to the realization about another major part of her life that shook her to her core.
“The counselor was explaining how cults would silence parents, silence kids, use these tactics to make sure members stayed,” Shikuma recalled in an interview. “The whole time the counselor is talking I’m not thinking about my life. I’m thinking ‘oh, my God. This is my job.’
“This what (Azarian coaches) told kids: if you leave the gym no one is going to like you, no one is going to be there for you, you’re not going to get into college, you’re going to get fat, you’re going to get lazy.
“I’m not saying the gym is a cult but they’re still using controlling tactics.”
Three years later the moment still brings Shikuma to tears.
“It really got to me, hit me really hard,” she said.
“I couldn’t believe that I did that to those kids, that I had yelled at them,” she continued, her voice cracking. “And I…
“And I beat them down.
“As a coach I was told to do that by other coaches but I’m an adult. I take full responsibility. And I feel awful about everything I did. So I decided I wanted to make it right.”
***
Shikuma grew up as an athletic child in Grants Pass, a lumber town of nearly 35,000 in southwest Oregon about an hour drive up Interstate 5 from the California border.
Her family belonged in The Living Word Fellowship, a Pentecostal church founded by John Robert Stevens in South Gate in the early 1950s. The church, described as religious cult in three lawsuits filed California last year, grew to more than 100 congregations on the West Coast, Hawaii and Iowa in the 1970s largely by attracting members of the 1960s counter culture still looking for answers a decade later.
“I was born into it,” Shikuma said. “I didn’t know any different.”
Before members could make any significant decision it had to be approved by a designated mentor who reported to a larger committee. “Children are assigned to an adult, not a parent, to develop what is referred to as a Designated Relationship or ‘DR,’” the lawsuits filed Los Angeles and San Diego Superior Courts allege.
“You got pregnant when they told you, you got married when they told you,” Shikuma said. “You had to submit a (request) to have a family. The church didn’t want anyone to go to college. You could only move to where a church was located.”
Her father died from brain cancer when she was 18. Shikuma was sent to Hawaii by the church in 2001. Eventually, she married another church member.
“I found out he was a heroin addict the day after (the wedding),” she said laughing at herself. “I don’t know how I didn’t see it. After we split up, the church shamed us. Friends wouldn’t talk to me again. I got kicked out (of the church) essentially.”
Which was fine with Shikuma. She was 26.
“I didn’t want to bring kids up in that,” she said.
But it was another decision that caused a rift between Shikuma and her mother.
“I literally ran off to join the circus,” she said.
Shikuma and some friends had attended a Cirque du Soleil show in Hawaii and then met some of the cast after the show.
“I remember thinking, ‘I can do that’ and ‘You guys get paid for that?’” she recalled. “’And I can do that better than them.’”
She moved to the Bay Area and enrolled in a circus school while also working part-time as a coach at a local gymnastics club. For a while, she appeared to be on track to becoming a circus acrobat. But then she was unable to find a male acrobat partner after her first partner suffered a major back injury.
“I looked for a partner for a year, couldn’t find one,” Shikuma said. “And I hated the weather in the Bay Area. I was cold and miserable the whole time. But I still really liked gymnastics and I liked coaching kids. So I decided I’m going to make this my career. And if I’m going to do this I’m going to be the best I can be.”
Looking at scores on a gymnastics website she decided that the top three gyms in Southern California were SCATS, the world-famous Olympic and U.S. national team member producing factory in Huntington Beach, Wildfire, a Lake Forest gym, and Azarian. SCATS and Wildfire didn’t have coaching openings at the time. Azarian did.
“I called in sick at work and flew down for an interview and flew back the same day,” Shikuma said.
As part of her job interview, Shikuma shadowed a different Azarian coach at each event. Beam was last. That’s where she first met Gonzalez.
“She was yelling at them,” Shikuma said. “Some of them were bawling their eyes out.”
But their technique was close to flawless.
“And I thought, ‘Wow, this place is badass, this is hardcore,’” Shikuma said. “This is what it takes to get to the Olympics, to get a college scholarship. This is what I’m looking for.
“I was shell-shocked. These kids were doing skills I had never seen before in real life. I had seen them on TV. But these kids were doing it right in front of me.
“I thought, ‘Wow, this is where I want to be.’”
Shikuma started coaching at Azarian in February 2012. Eventually she moved into an apartment with Gonzalez and Gonzalez’s future husband Edmund O’Connor, currently Azarian’s boys team coordinator and coach.
But back at Azarian, Shikuma said she was constantly under pressure to be tougher on the gymnasts she was coaching.
“Vanessa would coach over me when I wasn’t getting things right,” she wrote in the complaint. “She would butt into my beam rotation and start yelling at my kids to straighten their legs or point their toes and if they didn’t she’d send them to rope. Then she’d yell at me and tell me that if a kid falls, they get a rope climb. If their legs bend, they get leg lifts. If their back arches in a handstand, they get hollow body rocks. If they can’t hold their handstand, they get push-ups. I was told to break them. I was told I wasn’t hard enough on them. Then I’d see her go show off her authority by yelling at her own group on beam. When I wasn’t hard enough on the kids, she’d butt into my rotation again and start yelling and punishing them with conditioning. Just to, in a way, show me how weak I was. How I wasn’t doing my job correctly. I was stressed beyond belief.
“Things progressively got worse the longer I was there.”
Gonzalez wasn’t the only Azarian coach upset with Shikuma’s coaching style.
“There was one occasion Perry was frustrated with me that I wasn’t getting the kids to run fast enough down the runway so he grabbed a little 6-year-old by the legs and threw her against the resi-pit vault system like a sledge hammer,” Shikuma wrote in the complaint. “Continuing to hold her like a baseball bat by the legs and slam her body into the mat. Then when he was finished he grabbed her head and smashed it into the mat several more times. All to show the girl that the mat is ‘soft and cannot hurt you.’ He then looked at me and told me to do that to every kid. I told him I couldn’t because I wasn’t strong enough. So then he told me to start smashing their faces into the mat every time they don’t run fast enough. I tried to do that to the first 2 kids while he stood there with his arms folded watching me, and when he walked away I stopped. I was terrified that he was going to turn around and see that I wasn’t doing what he told me to do but I just couldn’t. Physically or mentally. I just couldn’t.”
Former Azarian athlete Ashton Woodbury, now a gymnast at Cal, said she had a similar experience with Davies.
Davies, Woodbury said in an interview, would “pick you up by my feet and body slam you into the mats and then laugh. He would laugh.”
After a frustrating first year at the gym, Shikuma said she decided to try to coach like Gonzalez and Davies.
“In 2013, I was even meaner and even tougher,” she recalled in an interview. “I was screaming at the girls. I almost had almost the entire group quit on me.”
Shikuma also received her first, and she says her only complaint from a parent after she kicked a 6-year-old girl out of class. It turned out that the girl’s mother, Stefanie Williams-Goldberg, was also a coach at Azarian. Williams-Goldberg filed a written complaint with Eduard Azarian.
Shikuma met with Azarian and Williams-Goldberg apologized and the matter was resolved. Shikuma and Williams-Goldberg became friends.
“Rena was trying to adapt to the culture of the gym which is definitely pretty strict,” said Williams-Goldberg, who coached at Azarian for 10 years. “I think she tried that for a while and it wasn’t her. She spoke to me and wanted to change that.”
Changing her coaching methods, Shikuma said, wasn’t just about the girls she was working with.
“I couldn’t stand who I was becoming,” she said. “I couldn’t take it any longer.
“So I used the correction technique the other coaches used but did it in a positive way. I went back to coaching my old way of coaching where I talked to the kids, had conversations with them, talking to the girls, laughing with them, getting to know them.”
Before long her group’s competition scores were soaring, exceeding those for Gonzalez’s group, Shikuma said.
“Rena was still a tough coach, but it wasn’t about that,” Williams-Goldberg said. “It was how she was delivering the message.”
Still Shikuma said she was feeling pressure from Gonzales and Davies to coach in a more aggressive way. She began to suffer panic attacks, she said. Once she began shaking so uncontrollably she had to be taken to the hospital, Shikuma said.
“I was on anti-anxiety meds for a year,” she said.
After the therapy session realization in 2017, Shikuma vowed to change the culture at Azarian from within. By late last fall, she said it was obvious Gonzalez wasn’t changing.
In June she filed a formal complaint against Gonzalez and Davies with the U.S. Center for SafeSport. SafeSport declined to take jurisdiction over the case but referred the complaint to USA Gymnastics, Allyson Anthony, SafeSport intake administrator, wrote in a June 30 email to Shikuma.
“Importantly, the Center’s declination of jurisdiction grants USA Gymnastics the authority to address and resolve the matter pursuant to its applicable policies and procedures,” Anthony wrote.
A few days later Shikuma filed a formal complaint against Gonzalez and Davies with USA Gymnastics.
Shikuma said she is not a disgruntled employee and texts between Gonzalez and her seem to indicate that she left the gym on good terms.
On April 21, Gonzalez in a text complimented a photo of Shikuma’s two daughters. “My two favs!!!”
Gonzalez in a May 6 text asked Shikuma when she was returning to the gym.
“All is okay but just want to know,” Gonzalez wrote.
Shikuma responded that she planned to come back in July but had concerns related to the coronavirus because of a family member with an underlying condition.
“I completely agree,” Gonzalez replied. “I just didn’t want to replace you in any way without having talked first.
“You will always have a job at Azarian so long as I’m there.
“Please look into what is best for you. And let me know if you need anything. And when you do come back DEMAND free tuition for the girls, say you won’t come back without it. I’ll say we need you and they will fold.”
On July 8, Gonzalez wrote in a text “Are you ever coming back lol.”
Two days later she wrote “How’s the fam?”
“Haven’t heard from you and now I’m a little worried,” Gonzalez wrote in a second text on July 10. “You guys okay? Granparents okay? We don’t have to talk about work, really nothing to talk about anyway. I just texted you Wednesday bc something reminded me of you and we haven’t talked.”
Shikuma resigned from the gym citing coronavirus concerns in a July 21 email to Marina Azarian, Eduard’s wife, and Albina Azarian-Myers, Marina and Eduard’s daughter and the gym’s office manager.
“I feel it is in the best interest of myself and my family members for me to stay home,” Shikuma wrote. “Thank you for the opportunities you have given me.”
Asked about the circumstances surrounding Shikuma’s departure, Azarian officials said in a statement that “Before her resignation, Azarian was prepared for her to return to coaching.”
“During the early months of Rena’s maternity leave she remained friendly with the coaches, often texting. Rena recommended families to the gym and sung the praises of the coaches, specifically Vanessa Gonzalez and Perry Davies, to a family in December 2019,” the statement continued. “We are unsure of the event that caused Rena to become unhappy with Azarian or with any of the coaches during the 6 month time that she was on leave from the gym.”
***
“It’s not about Rena,” Williams-Goldberg said. “She’s just really doing this for the kids. She really wants to stop the culture in the gym.”
Shikuma was asked if it was a hard decision to file a complaint against her former roommate Gonzalez given the families’ relationships.
“You mean because she loved and cared about my kids and family? No,” Shikuma said “I kept her at bay always. This is about doing the right thing.”
She and her family know coming forward will come with a price.
“People are always quick to demonize,” said Chris Shikuma, Rena’s husband. “As a whistleblower, you’re going to take a lot of crap. People are going to make up lies about you, ‘Oh, she’s disgruntled.’
“But Rena has always been very strong. And she has extra motivation with our daughters. She wants to protect them from Vanessa or another Vanessa. That’s the underlying thing. (Rena says) ‘I’m fighting for our daughters’ future.’ That’s extra motivation. ‘I’m protecting girls, giving them a voice.’
“So you can’t let the (negativity) deter you. I told her you’re on the side of right. You’re protecting girls who will never know your name or what you did. But the ripple from it will be there and will protect them.”
Source: Orange County Register
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