Published July 23, 2026 10:30AM
On June 20, 2022, a mother accompanied her 13-year-old son to First Ascent Climbing and Fitness in Peoria, a small city in central Illinois. She’d signed him up for the gym’s indoor climbing summer camp, a youth program that offered all-day climbing on weekdays and boasted a one-to-six instructor-to-student ratio. On the online camp intake form, she’d described her son as “energetic and impulsive.” Before she left the facility, however, she gave the gym staff a warning: Her son was not to be left alone around the bathroom.
She might have said “in” the bathroom; she might have said there had been a “past incident.” Her exact wording, as well as how the gym staff interpreted it, has since been debated in court for the past four years. What’s not disputed is that the first week of the climbing camp went by without any issues. But as soon as the son returned for week two, on July 18, 2022, the unthinkable happened. It was a crime that First Ascent cofounder Jon Shepard would later describe as “the worst thing that has ever happened at a climbing gym,” aside from fatal accidents.
That day, the 13-year-old lured a fellow camper, a five-year-old boy, into the multi-stall men’s bathroom and unsuccessfully attempted to sexually abuse him. A few minutes later, the 13-year-old brought a different camper, an eight-year-old boy, into the same bathroom. He sexually abused the younger boy for about 30 minutes. The eight-year-old later underwent a rape kit, which tested positive. In total, the three children were left unattended by staff for 50 minutes
For leaving their child unsupervised, the eight-year-old survivor’s family sued First Ascent for both negligence and willful and wanton misconduct. Four years later, on June 29, 2026, a Cook County jury in Chicago found the gym liable on both counts. The jury awarded the survivor’s family $50 million in damages—the largest financial penalty against a climbing gym in history. (The second-highest, an $8 million settlement, resulted from an auto-belay accident in California)
Attorney Brad Cosgrove, who represented the family, explained to Climbing that $49 million of the damages were compensatory to directly address the survivor’s post-traumatic stress disorder. Cosgrove said the incident resulted in a “complete change in personality” for the boy, severely disrupting his life. An additional $1 million in damages were punitive, similar to a fine
“One of the goals the family had, in this case, wasn’t to get revenge,” Cosgrove told Climbing this week, “but to make sure this never happens again to anyone in the future.”
An unexpected perpetrator
Jon Shepard, First Ascent’s cofounder and a lawyer himself, recently broke his media silence to speak over the phone with Climbing. “We’re absolutely heartbroken about what happened here,” he said, “and we feel awful that it happened at one of our gyms.” He confirmed that after the incident, First Ascent tightened their rules around bathroom use. A staff member now must escort one child at a time to the bathroom and wait outside until the child is done
But Shepard also said that the public was missing a key detail about the case: The teen assailant had a history of sexual misconduct—and a pattern of targeting younger children—that his family did not disclose before enrolling him in First Ascent’s camp, which is open to kids as young as five
“What came out at trial,” Shepard said, “was that the family of the perpetrator knew of multiple situations where the child had—in a day care scenario, or in the family house when there were neighbor children over—tried to play doctor with other children or [had] taken off their clothes and tried to touch someone inappropriately, or had tried to forcibly remove someone’s clothes and touch them inappropriately.”
As a result of the assailant’s history of sexual assault, his therapist had created a “safety plan,” which required that the assailant always have adult supervision around other kids. (Editor’s note: Due to the sealed judgment and the involvement of minors,Climbingwas unable to reach the assailant’s family to confirm the details of the plan.) When the assailant’s mother stopped by the gym on his first day and informed gym staff that her son should not be left alone around the bathroom, she was likely attempting to enforce that plan. However, she did not convey the consequences of ignoring it.
A misunderstood request
“My counselors interpreted that the mother was saying she would like us to please keep an eye on her son so that he would not be bullied around the bathroom,” said Shepard. After a week at camp, none of his staff noticed any mistreatment toward that teen, who was among the oldest at the camp. “I think everyone was under the impression that ‘Hey, it seems like this bullying thing is not a risk,’” he said
Cosgrove criticized First Ascent for not taking steps to understand the warning. “[The mother’s] request was so unusual and so weird and so not normal,” he said on an appearance last week on Fox 32 Chicago. “The camp needed to ask further questions.” Later, in conversation with Climbing, he underscored the gym staff’s failures to resolve their own confusion: “Nobody followed up to say, ‘Why can’t he be in the bathroom alone?”
Shepard said that with hindsight, he regretted that his staff did not follow up to learn more. Still, he emphasized that the mother chose not to inform the gym that her 13-year-old had a personal history of sexually mistreating other kids. If she did, First Ascent would never have accepted the risk of even having him around other kids in the first place
“If you were to call up any summer camp in the country,” Shepard said, “and say, ‘Hey, we have a child here that has a history of sexual misconduct and has been known to go after younger children inappropriately in a sexual way. Are you capable of taking him on as a camper?’ I think any camp in the country would say, ‘No. We can never take that risk.’”
Why SafeSport training didn’t prevent the abuse
Throughout the trial, Cosgrove emphasized that the gym was negligent in allowing the children to be alone for nearly an hour unsupervised. In a post-verdict video released on July 17 on YouTube, the attorney argued that First Ascent knew how to run a gym, but was unprepared to run a summer camp
“The kids went freely in and out of the bathroom without any type of supervision or any type of safety system,” he said, citing surveillance footage of the gym during camp. “Established camps have rules and procedures for how children are allowed to use the bathroom and what supervision has allowed.”
Before the First Ascent climbing camp started, all of the counselors had completed industry-standard SafeSport training, which is designed to prevent the abuse of child athletes. However, today’s SafeSport policies, which were implemented across the U.S. in 2017, were written to assume that the perpetrator is an adult, such as a coach or parent. For example, SafeSport’s <a href="https://maapp.uscenterforsafesport.org/resource/2025-minor-athlete-abuse-prevention-policies/” rel=”nofollow noopener” target=”_blank”>Minor Athlete Abuse Prevention Policies handbook bars adults from exposing themselves to a minor in a locker room or changing area. It does not address when and how minors may expose themselves to other minors—or define how minors can use locker rooms or bathrooms together.
“No one had ever heard of this on my team, the idea of minor-on-minor sexual assault,” Shepard admitted
Such sexual violence is perceived as rare, but it’s more common than most people know. A 2019 peer-reviewed study of more than 13,000 American minors found that more than 70% of child sexual abuse and assault incidents, among both male and female victims, were committed by other juveniles. However, these cases do not often end up on the news. Most juvenile criminal records are sealed and rarely publicized. This confidentiality is an important feature of the justice system, but it also makes the prominence of youth-on-youth sexual abuse more invisible to the public.
If awareness inspires action, its inverse is also true: No awareness inspires no action. After all, it was the widespread public outrage over Larry Nassar’s abuse of underage gymnasts, including multiple beloved Olympic champions like Simone Biles, that inspired the creation of SafeSport in the first place. But youth-on-youth sexual abuse survivors almost never have a public villain to rally against. For SafeSport training to eventually help protect child athletes from perpetrators under 18, too, its administrators may first need to amend the idea of what a child abuser looks like, beyond Nassar, without having a new face to replace him with.
How can climbing gyms keep children safe?
Today, youth programs—including day care, youth competitions, and summer camps—are responsible for 5-10% of total gym revenue, making them a “critical part of the gym ecosystem,” executive director of the Climbing Wall Association (CWA). Yet he believes climbing gyms could benefit from an education on proper supervision during summer camps
“If we find a solution to an issue like this,” Moore said, “it’s better for it to be rolled out across an entire state or across an entire day camp world to help improve operations more broadly.” He added that the CWA can help gym owners connect with consultants or legal re
Until SafeSport catches up, there is no industry-wide policy for bathroom supervision during indoor climbing programs. But several gyms besides First Ascent have filled the gaps with their own. At the Salt Lake City location of The Front, an independently owned gym chain in Utah, climbing instructors accompany children to the multi-stall bathrooms in large groups, according to a front desk staff member. At Momentum, which operates across three U.S. states and Bulgaria, instructors use a similar policy for multi-stall bathrooms. For single-person, gender-neutral bathrooms, the instructors stand outside while one child at a time uses it. Two children cannot go in together.
“For multi-stall restrooms, locker rooms, and any other private or secluded spaces, our procedures emphasize the ‘Rule of Three,’” Momentum CEO Eliza Keegan wrote in an email to Climbing. “Both staff-participant interactions and participant-participant interactions occur in groups of three or more people.”
For any gyms who don’t currently have a bathroom supervision policy for minors, this $50 million verdict serves as an alarm bell to form one immediately. In general, Cosgrove said that climbing gyms should be wary of trying to “bring on additional revenue” with youth programs without establishing proper procedures. He recommends that gyms interested in expanding into summer camps hire a professional consultant to help them design their policies, hire staff with experience running a camp, and collect a detailed background on all campers. Cosgrove also advised gyms to ensure they have a large amount of legal insurance to cover any potential risk. “Don’t wing it,” he warned.
Although a verdict has been reached, First Ascent’s legal team and insurance company are still weighing the possibility of an appeal. “We don’t know what the future holds,” Shepard said. “Our intention at the time is that we’re remaining focused on serving our customers and our community while the legal process continues. We’re committed to doing the best we can to ensure First Ascent remains a place where our members and customers can climb and connect and love this sport that brought us together.”
If you or someone you love has experienced sexual assault, contact RAINN’s National Sexual Assault Hotlineat this linkor call +1 800-656-4673
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