Former Woodward Camp gymnastics coach sentenced to state prison for assault of gymnast
A former Woodward Camp gymnastics coach convicted of inappropriately touching a teenage gymnast during a 2019 drill at one of the top training grounds in the country couldn’t avoid a state prison sentence Tuesday.
Nathaniel L. Singer, 27, of Massachusetts, was sentenced by Centre County Judge Brian Marshall to 2 1/2 to five years in state prison. He’s scheduled to report May 24.
Singer was also sentenced to three years of probation and must register as a sex offender for the rest of his life.
The former gymnast and her parents told Marshall the abuse upended their lives. In a recorded statement that spanned about 16 minutes, the teen described feeling ashamed and humiliated.
She spoke of depression, anxiety, panic attacks, sleep terrors and a fractured relationship with her parents. She struggles to trust adults, especially men.
Years of therapy has helped, she said, but some days are worse than others.
“This whole situation has (cost) me years of my life that I will never get back, a lot of experiences. I will never get to walk the high school graduation stage; I won’t even get to go to prom,” she said. “These are once-in-a-lifetime experiences. I know you get older and it’s dumb, but at my age, this is something that is really important to me and to a lot of my peers. Most days when I wake up, I remind myself that all of this wasn’t my fault. This shouldn’t have happened to me.”
Singer was found guilty in January of two felony counts of aggravated indecent assault and two misdemeanor counts of indecent assault after a two-day trial. The jury of seven women and five men deliberated for about seven hours.
He was convicted of digitally penetrating the teen while spotting her.
Singer was also ruled ineligible to be a member of USA Gymnastics by the U.S. Center for SafeSport — a center tasked with investigating sex-abuse claims in Olympic sports — for sexual misconduct.
Centre County Assistant District Attorney Josh Andrews used his closing argument during the trial to cast Singer as calculated in his pursuit of the gymnast, saying that he chose someone that was young, naive and followed what coaches told her.
The teen from a Chicago suburb disclosed the assault in January 2021. Her mother testified during trial that her daughter seemed “broken,” while a close friend testified she seemed “rattled.”
Her mother described feeling like “a shell of a person” as she navigated the criminal justice system and tried to protect her daughter. She described her daughter as “brave and strong.”
“Our family has forever changed. Our home has not been the same since our life was turned upside down,” she said. “... (My daughter) is my hero. She has no idea how many children she has protected by sharing her story. Unfortunately, forever altered is my happy daughter who had so much faith and trust in others.”
Added the teen’s father: “He took the innocence away from my daughter. He took away my baby. That’s all I’ve got to say. He took my baby, the innocence of her childhood going into young adulthood.”
Their daughter was among those who testified during the trial, telling the Centre County jury that she’s no longer a gymnast.
She turned to competitive cheerleading and hopes to attend Clemson University to pursue a degree in business or construction management, she said in January.
“As a kid, you shouldn’t really be dealing with things like this,” she said Tuesday.
Singer, who last coached at the camp in 2020, offered a wholesale denial of the allegations when he testified at his trial. Neither he nor his father, who spoke in his son’s defense, put forward an apology Tuesday.
“You really are truly putting an innocent man in jail today,” Singer said.
The teen and her mother took aim at how Woodward Camp responded to the allegations. The latter said the camp ignored her daughter’s outcry in order to “protect a monster.”
The family filed a lawsuit in December 2021 against the camp, Singer and a former administrator. No trial date has been set. It’s unlikely a jury would hear the case this year; a federal judge scheduled pre-trial deadlines through February 2024.
“There was a lot of people that let me down when I was young,” she said.
