Why Every Parkour Gym Owner Needs Child Abuse Prevention Training (And How to Start)
- Jimmy Davidson
- May 13
- 8 min read
A direct message to parkour gym owners. Please read all of it.
Start Here
Children were harmed. That comes first. Before any of our feelings. Before any of our brands. Before any of our shock.
If you run a parkour gym, you have to read this.
In May of 2026, the parkour world learned that Callum Powell of Storror pleaded guilty to making and possessing indecent images of children. People in the UK and around our community have since spoken up about a pattern of abusive behavior that some say was ignored for years.
This is not a only UK problem. This is not only a Storror problem. This is a problem for any activity that pairs children with adults. This is our time as a parkour community to take a stand and declare that this will NOT define parkour or stain our still-growing culture. But words are just words; outrage is short-lived. This takes action and long-term commitment. That's what this article is about.
If you run a gym, you are responsible for the safety of every child who walks through your doors. You mess that up, and your career is over, and worse, you could cause real harm.
This isn't the first and won't be the last.
I want to be honest with you about what we have seen at Motion Mentors.
When the Storror news broke, one of the gyms we work with reached out. They realized something felt off with one of their employees. Red flags became clear. The Storror story gave them the push to act. We helped them identify the behavior, document it, and fire the employee fast.
That was not the only gym. We know of at least three parkour gyms in the last few years that had to terminate an employee for behavior that put kids at risk. They took action before harm was caused. That's the right call.
Three gyms that we know about. That is just our small slice of the community.
Gymnastics has been through this. They lived through one of the worst sports abuse scandals in history. They did not see it coming. Their coaches did not see it coming. Their parents did not see it coming. Their leaders did not see it coming.
We, the parkour community, can see it coming. We are seeing it right now in Storror in the UK. This is our sign to take action, dear PK gym owner.
The question is what you do next.
Is Child Abuse common within sports?
The U.S. Center for SafeSport runs the largest study on abuse in youth sports. SafeSport's 2024 report surveyed 3,762 athletes across 67 sports. Some of the findings:
11% of athletes said they experienced unwanted sexual contact during their sport involvement.
43% of those athletes said at least one of those experiences happened before they turned 18.
Coaches and assistant coaches were the most common people behind non-consensual sexual touching, followed by athlete peers.
Only about 1 in 10 athletes who experienced sexual harm filed a formal report.
Let that last one sit for a second.
Nine out of ten kids who were harmed did not tell anyone in a formal way. The most common reasons they gave: they did not think anyone would believe them. They did not think anything would be done.
If you run a gym, you are part of the system that has to fix that.
What Predators Look For
Predators do not show up looking like predators. They show up looking like coaches. Like helpers. Like the person who volunteers extra. Like the one who is great with the kids.
They look for environments where:
Adults are alone with kids without other adults watching
Staff do not know what abuse looks like
Leadership does not take complaints seriously
Reporting is hard, vague, or scary
The culture protects adults over kids
Every one of those is a choice your gym makes on purpose or by accident. None of those are accidents you can afford.
Parkour Gym Owner Needs Child Abuse Prevention Training
I am not asking you to be perfect. I am asking you to start.
Here is the short list. None of it is optional.
1. Mandate Safe Sport training for every new hire
The U.S. Center for SafeSport (uscenterforsafesport.org) offers a recognized training course on child safety in youth sports. It covers what abuse looks like. How to report it. What grooming looks like. What healthy coach-to-athlete relationships look like.
Make this part of your onboarding. Day one. Before the new coach is left alone with any child. No exceptions. No "they will get to it later."
If a person will not take a one-hour training to protect kids, you do not want them coaching at your gym.
2. Run Child Abuse Prevention Training biannually
Once is not enough. People forget. New people show up. Patterns change.
Once every six months, sit your whole staff down for Child Abuse Prevention Training. Walk through:
The signs of abuse and grooming
How can a parent or a kid report something to you
What will you do when they do
The two-adult rule (no coach alone with a child in a private space — ever)
Locker room, bathroom, and pickup policies
Social media and texting rules between staff and minors
Twenty minutes. Every quarter. Write it down. Track who attended.
(New coaches need it right away) When this is baked into your annual calendar, you communicate to your team that this is important and your company culture is focused on safety. This takes leadership from the gym owner and all managers.
Begin your parkour gym child abuse prevention training.
3. Believe the kids. Believe the parents. Hear the victims.
This one will be the hardest.
When a kid or a parent comes to you with something that does not sit right, your job is to take it seriously. Every time. Even if it is about your best coach. Even if it is about your friend. Even if you think there is no way.
You do not have to be the judge. You do not have to know the full story. You have to listen, document, separate the adults from the kids while you look into it, and bring in the right help.
The job is not to protect the adult's reputation. The job is to protect the kid/victim.
From there, you report to your local authorities, you suspend the coach, and you confront this head-on. Do your due diligence and investigation with local authorities. Fire the coach right away, the moment the emerging facts begin to tell a story of abuse.
4. Make reporting easy
If a parent does not know how to tell you something is wrong, they will not tell you.
Put a clear page on your website. A "contact us" page, at the bare minimum, that's easy to locate and is actually monitored daily. Put it in your welcome packet. Send it in your monthly email. Something like:
"If you ever feel concerned about your child's experience at our gym, please contact [name] directly at [email and phone]. We take every concern seriously and we will respond within 24 hours."
Make sure parents know about SafeSport's reporting line too: 833-587-7233. They can report any concern, including ones about your gym, directly to a third party.
5. Know your governing body
The United States Parkour Association (USPKA) has stepped up as a real governing body for our sport. They are building out safety resources and clear, actionable guidance for gym owners. Use them.
You are not alone in this. There are people doing the work right now to make our community safer. Plug in.
Here is the tightened version. Carrier-neutral and trimmed by about a third.
Get Abuse and Molestation Insurance Coverage
This one is so important. And most gym owners do not know they are missing it.
Your general liability insurance might not cover abuse or molestation claims. That sounds wild, but it is true. Some policies are silent on it. Some have it, but with weak limits. Some have so many exclusions the coverage falls apart the second something happens.
You need to know which one yours is. Today.
Call your insurance agent this week
Ask these exact questions:
Does my policy include Abuse and Molestation coverage?
What are the per-incident and annual limits?
Does it cover employee-on-child AND child-on-child abuse?
Does it cover sexual, physical, AND verbal abuse?
What exclusions void the coverage? (Background checks are a common one.)
Does the limit apply to my whole organization or to each location?
If your agent does not know the answers, keep digging. This is too important for guesswork.
Why this matters
Lawsuits do not just happen when something terrible was actually done. They happen when something is alleged. Even if your gym did everything right, legal fees alone can run six figures.
Here is a real case from one major sports insurance carrier. A teacher saw a kid bullying another kid. She stopped it. She reported it. By the book. The parents sued the school AND the teacher anyway.
The school had the right coverage. Both the school and the teacher were protected. Without it, they would have been in a fight they could not afford.
What it shows
Carrying this coverage is not just a financial decision. It is a cultural decision. You are telling your team and your parents that you take this seriously enough to put money behind it.
The cost is small compared to the risk. Make the call this week.
A Word About Culture
A safe gym does not happen by accident. It happens because the leader builds a culture where speaking up is normal.
If your coaches are afraid to flag something because they think you will side with the senior staff, your gym is not safe.
If your parents are afraid to ask hard questions because they think you will see them as a problem, your gym is not safe.
If your kids do not know which adult they can go to when something feels wrong, your gym is not safe.
Culture is not a poster on the wall. Culture is what you do when something hard happens.
The next time a coach raises a concern about another coach, watch how you react. Those five seconds tell your whole team what kind of gym they work at.
The Bottom Line
This is the moment for parkour gym owners to lead.
Gymnastics had to learn this lesson the hard way. We do not have to. We can be the sport that took the warning seriously the first time.
Here is the test:
If a kid at your gym was being harmed today, would you know? Would your staff know what to look for? Would the parent feel safe telling you? Would you act fast and put the kid first?
If you cannot answer yes to all four, you have work to do this week.
Children's safety is not a brand initiative. It is the job.
Resources
Free. All of them. Use them.
U.S. Center for SafeSport — Training, reporting, education: uscenterforsafesport.org
SafeSport Helpline — 833-587-7233
United States Parkour Association — Governing body resources for parkour gyms
Motion Mentors free content — Free Articles, Mentorship and Live Advice, Frameworks for running a safer, healthier gym: motionmentors.org
If you want help building this into your gym's operations, our resources are free and online. We are not posting this for clicks. We are posting this because the community needs every owner to take this seriously, and we have already been part of helping gyms handle it the right way. Use the material. Share it with your team. Talk about it in your next staff meeting.
The kids at our gyms are why we built these places. Let's keep them safe.
Jimmy Davidson & Christopher Hollingsworth are the founders of Freedom in Motion and Motion Mentors. They have worked with parkour gym owners across the country on operations, leadership, and culture for over a decade. Motionmentors.org
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