Athletes who trained at Allentown’s elite Parkettes Gymnastics Club say they were shamed over their weight as teenage girls, pressed to keep training when doctors ordered them to rest and heal, and subjected to lewd and sexually inappropriate remarks by a male coach who trained Olympians and national champions for 40 years.

Three former Parkettes gymnasts spoke to The Morning Call about their complaints to the U.S. Center for SafeSport that resulted in an ongoing investigation of five Parkettes coaches, including owners Bill and Donna Strauss. SafeSport was created by Congress in 2017 to promote safety in amateur athletics.

The women, among 11 former Parkettes who complained to SafeSport, spoke on condition of anonymity because of their continued involvement in the sport. They said their coaches verbally berated them for mistakes, made them work out with fractures and other injuries, controlled what they ate, and made inappropriate comments about their bodies.

“As a kid, I was like ‘I’m horrible at gymnastics. They’re doing this to make me better.’ And it wasn’t until I was older I realized how twisted that was,” said one woman, who trained at Parkettes for a decade before leaving her senior year and going on to compete at a Division I university.

Another said she was punished for gaining weight at 13 years old by being told to run on a treadmill or climb ropes.

“The number I remember on the scale was 96 pounds, and if the number wasn’t 96 pounds, I was fat, even though I was a pre-teen girl,” said the woman, who now works as a coach at another gym.

The women, now in their late teens and early 20s, trained at Parkettes between the mid-2000s and 2016 and 2017. They said they contacted Safe­Sport to complain about abuse with the hope that it would keep other girls from experiencing the same thing.

“I don’t want to see coaches that are still there coaching little girls. It’s hard that it has taken this long for it to finally come to the surface. I don’t know how many other girls are being affected,” one said.

Another said she doesn’t blame her coaches, but recognizes now that the experience left lasting damage.

“My emotional response was just like broken because my feelings never mattered in the sport. I would say my ankle hurts, I just rolled my ankle, and they would say just keep going, put some ice on it,” she said.

The notices of allegations against the five coaches were issued Feb. 10 and are not public, but a source with knowledge of the accusations provided details that they involve physical and emotional abuse primarily between 2013 and 2016 reported by at least 11 gymnasts.

Four also accused longtime coach John Holman of sexual harassment. Holman has been restricted from unsupervised contact with minors since 2019, when he was confronted with allegations of improper touching and inappropriate comments dating to the early 1990s.

The source provided the names of some of the women who made the most recent complaints against Parkettes, two of whom provided emails from SafeSport investigator Scott Tripp last week confirming that notice of their accusations had been or would soon be delivered to the coaches.

Tripp said he could not discuss the investigation, and a spokesperson for SafeSport said in an email that the center does not comment on matters to protect the integrity of the process.

Parkettes attorney Thomas Turczyn said the organization has received the notices of allegations and is reviewing them, but he declined to comment further. He declined to share the document. Coaches Robin Netwall and Heather Moroz, who no longer coaches at Parkettes, are also named in the allegations, according to the source. Netwall declined to comment. Efforts to reach Moroz at the New Jersey gym where she is now listed as a coach were not successful.

Holman’s attorney, Russell Prince, said the SafeSport investigation that began before he was put on restrictions in 2019 has yielded nothing to suggest Holman is guilty of misconduct.