DENVER (AP) — There was an eight-year gap between the time young gymnasts and their parents started sounding warnings about a coach in 2017 and when he was arrested earlier this year on federal child pornography charges. It took the U.S. Center for SafeSport — the agency formed by Congress to combat this type of abuse — until 2022 to sanction that coach, Sean Gardner. Now, an Associated Press investigation has found that months before Gardner’s arrest in August on allegations of installing cameras in a girls gym bathroom in Purvis, Mississippi, he was willing to accept a lifetime ban from coaching gymnastics as part of a deal where he would admit to the abuse, according to three people involved with SafeSport and its handling of the case.