Former artistic swimming athletes seek damages for alleged abuse by national team coaches

Five women who used to be part of the national artistic swimming team have come forward to denounce abuse they say they suffered at the hands of coaching staff, and to demand damages from the sport federation.

The former artistic swimming athletes (the sport was formerly called synchronized swimming) filed a request for a class action lawsuit against Canada Artistic Swimming (CAS), asking to sue for collective damages over psychological abuse and harassment suffered while training.

The lawsuit would cover athletes who were training and competing between 2010 and 2020, and seeks compensation of $250,000 for punitive damages, as well as moral damages in the amount of $12,000 per athlete for each year they spent on the team.

Erin Willson, who trained with the team from 2007 to 2013, said she was regularly the victim of public body shaming by the head coach at the time, Julie Sauvé.

Willson, who is five foot eight and weighed at the time between 130 and 135 pounds was reprimanded by her coach for being overweight and received multiple written warnings for breaking her weight contract with the federation. 

"The moment that was the most shocking to me was the first time I ever heard anyone comment on my body in this way. [Sauvé] told me that my boobs were too big for synchro. I would also get comments on my legs being too big, and overall that I was too big as a person," said Willson.

After being benched due to her weight, Willson says she was pitted against a fellow alternate, after the women were told that whoever could lose more weight over the summer would be rewarded by regaining their team spot.

"At that point, I didn't feel I had any other choice than to stop eating," she said.

Willson said the repeated harassment about her body led her to develop a serious eating disorder. She was also diagnosed with anxiety, depression and PTSD.

Struggling with mental health and close to a breakdown, Willson said she felt trapped and unable to quit due to a contract locking her in for another year. If she left early, she was told she'd have to pay the federation $50,000.

Willson eventually was able to drop out of her training by taking a medical leave and seeking treatment for her eating disorder.

Now a PhD student who studies abuse in sport, Willson said she still feels the aftermath of her treatment at the hands of Sauvé, who died in April 2020.

"I don't think I'm ever going to be confident with my body or happy with how it looks," she said. "My body image will never be the same."

Quebec athlete Chloé Isaac also trained under Sauvé. She said her coach would often comment on her body as being "too muscular," which she felt was ironic considering she was training for the Olympics.

Isaac claims she and other teammates were often "humiliated" and insulted in front of peers and staff.

"It's really a taboo in artistic swimming," she said, adding that during her training she was both anorexic and bulimic.

Isaac said the swimmers lived in fear of regular weigh-ins, knowing that being over the goal by "a few grams" could be career-ending.

"We were normally weighed on Monday mornings, so on Sunday nights, no one ate much," Isaac told Radio-Canada.

When she consulted the team doctor about her eating disorder, she was told to take anti-depressants.

The swimmers said they voiced their concerns about Sauvé directly to Canada Artistic Swimming shortly before the 2012 Olympic Games, asking for her to be removed or supervised during training.

Concerned parents, including those of Isaac and Willson, also contacted the organization about the treatment of athletes.

Issues didn't end with Sauvé

Gabriella Brisson, another plaintiff, trained under Sauvé's two successors, Meng Chen and Leslie Sproule. She said Chen wouldn't give the athletes enough time to master risky manoeuvres and many of the women were injured as a result.

In May 2017, athletes demanded a meeting with the federation's chief sport officer, Julie Healy. Brisson alleges that when they tried to voice concerns, Chen started screaming at the women and had to be forcibly removed from the room twice.

After that, Chen remained on as head coach until athletes decided to send a message to management.

"We decided that we wouldn't go back to training while Meng was poolside because we weren't comfortable," said Brisson.

After that, Leslie Sproule took over as coach. Brisson suffered a concussion in the week before the team left for the 2017 FINA world championships in Hungary. She says Sproule pressured her to keep training and compete anyway.

"Leslie blatantly disregarded medical advice and actively exerted pressure on me to do far more than what was safe," said Brisson, who retired from the sport in 2018.

In November 2018, the CAS hired a new coach, Gabor Szauder. In 2020, a number of allegations were made against Szauder, claiming that he made sexist, racist and inappropriate comments and that he was verbally abusive. 

Sion Ormond, another plaintiff who retired in 2020, trained under both Sproule and Szauder.

She said under Sproule's leadership, athletes were getting injured frequently. 

"Never in my 13 years of artistic swimming had I seen so many injuries and concussion scares within one team. We once finished practice with five out of 10 athletes left in the water," she said.

She said her team wrote a letter to CAS outlining complaints about Sproule. Ormond said the response they received implied they were not resilient enough and perhaps not cut out to be Olympians.

Once Szauder arrived, Ormond said he became notorious for berating team members.

"His bullying was so aggressive and happened so frequently that my teammates and I made up a secret code word to support whoever Gabor was targeting that day," she said. "Not a lot of practices went by without someone breaking into tears."

Ormond said Szauder made inappropriate sexual comments to her which made her uncomfortable, but which she was afraid to share with her parents.

Ultimately, the environment became so unbearable for Ormond that she chose to abandon her Olympic dream rather than continue to train under Szauder.

When she reached out directly to Healy upon her retirement at the age of 21, and detailed the incidents she had witnessed, she felt that her reaction "lacked surprise, sympathy or concern."

Despite the allegations, Szauder is still the head coach of the team, which trains in Montreal.

CAS responds

In a statement released following the class action announcement Tuesday morning, Canada Artistic Swimming CEO Jackie Buckingham said the federation "commends the courage it took the former national team athletes to speak out at today's press conference, and we are deeply saddened by the suffering they reported."

She said that after allegations surfaced in 2020, CAS undertook "a comprehensive review of our national team training" as well as "an independent, third-party safe sport investigation."

The result was that "the lead investigator determined that they did not see sufficient evidence to conclude there is an unsafe training environment in the senior national team program."

However, Buckingham also said that "our organization recognized that there had been issues in the past and
acknowledged that although we cannot repair the painful experiences some athletes have faced in the sport in
the past, we are working very hard to improve things for the future."

Buckingham states that changes have already been put into effect, including a revamp of the coaching certification curriculum and the creation of an ombudsperson to receive athlete feedback directly.

The federation also provided "training on issues of diversity and inclusion, psychological abuse, and mental health for staff and coaches."