In the late 1990s there was no place an aspiring Australian Olympic athlete would rather be than the Institute of Sport in Canberra.

It was the lead-up to the Sydney Olympics and the giant bronze sculpture of two gymnasts — muscles rippling in the sun at the front of the building — spoke of sporting excellence, while a clock counted down the days until Australia would be the centre of world attention.

Inside were state-of-the-art courts, gyms and labs, where coaches, sports scientists, doctors and physiotherapists tended to the athletes. Their goal: to produce world-class sporting specimens capable of securing a swag of Olympic medals.

The athletes lived onsite in residences where they could devote themselves to the pursuit of their sporting dreams.

WARNING: This story contains details that readers may find distressing.

And it was where Elizabeth Brett found herself on her 18th birthday in January 1997.

Brett was one of the first young women selected once volleyball became an Australian Institute of Sport (AIS) scholarship program.

"It was super exciting for all of us," Brett said.

As Olympic host, Australia was an automatic qualifier in women's volleyball. It was to be the first [and so far, only] time an Australian women's side played at an Olympics.

"It really did feel like the optimal environment for us to be in if we wanted to get as good as we could before the Olympic Games," Brett said.

The following year she was joined by Selina Scoble, who had spent two years on a volleyball scholarship at Oregon State University in the US.

She jumped at the chance to return to Australia after being selected for the AIS program.

"I had no hesitation" she said.

"The AIS is a facility where if you're playing sport in Australia and you're representing Australia — that's the place to be."

'He ran her into the ground'

For the first few months, the women's program was headed by a caretaker, while Volleyball Australia (VA) searched the globe before appointing an American, Brad Saindon, to coach the women's team.

Saindon came with good credentials. He had previously worked as an assistant coach with the US Men's volleyball team and had spent 11 years coaching at the University of Colorado.

"My first impression of Brad was that he was technically brilliant," Brett said.

"[He] had an undying love for all things volleyball, had an encyclopedic knowledge of volleyball and strategy and technique."

It was Saindon who invited Scoble back from the US to join the AIS program.

"He had come from coaching the USA men's team or he was part of that coaching staff," she said.

"So instantly, the first thoughts were, well, he's got to be good."

But the positive first impressions didn't last long.

Brett said she first saw signs of what she described as Saindon's "aggression and volatility" on a tour to the US in 1997.

"He had moments where he'd get unnecessarily aggressive or upset in a particular moment during training," she said.

Brett remembered the treatment she alleges he meted out to one of the players on that tour, over an on-court miscommunication.

Brett said Saindon's training method for players making mistakes was a common volleyball coaching drill known as a "coach-on-one".

"It's when the coach gets a bag of balls and they throw the balls in and around the court and you have to chase them down, ultimately diving to get the ball up, jump up, go back, get another one," she said.

"With a good coach, they throw the ball likely just where you think you can't get it, but you can. So, it's encouraging you to take that extra step, go that extra mile.

"Brad's were not like that. He'd simply 'piff' the ball 15, 20 metres away from you and you had no chance of getting it — but if you didn't dive and hit the floor, then he got another bucket of balls, and it just kept going.

"And for this particular athlete, he literally exhausted her … and that was the first time I had a glimpse of what he was capable of," Brett said.

Scoble, who joined the team the following year, also alleges the coach-on-one drills were "excessive."

"He'd just yell at you — you know, 'get up, get up'. It was hard to watch. You know, there's a moral injury in watching your teammates [go through that]."

Another player, who wanted to remain anonymous, said the coach-on-ones were used to "punish someone 'til they break."

She said the other players had to return the balls to Saindon, which made them feel complicit.

Both Scoble and Brett recalled one of their teammates being taken to hospital after one of Saindon's coach-on-ones.

"She went white in the face, she was collapsing," Scoble said.

Saindon is now an assistant coach for Western Washington University in the United States.

He has said he does not think he did coach-on-ones during training sessions.

"Coach-on-ones are prominent in volleyball but they're old-school and I don't remember ever doing a coach-on-one when I was in Australia," he told ABC Sport.

"I don't recall ever doing that … that is outside of what I believe about coaching."

'Trip from hell'

One of Scoble's first experiences with the squad was during what she called a six-week "trip from hell" in rural Thailand in 1998.

"We were doing double days, which means training in the morning, training in the afternoon – and then we were also playing a five-set match every evening against the Thailand junior team," Scoble said.

"It was extreme humidity, we were walking to and from trainings. We had very little time just for the basics in between, like to come back and have a shower after training or to even rest, or to even just ice injuries or go to the physio to get an injury worked on."

Brett remembers the trip as "disastrous", with the training taking place on concrete courts in temperatures of 45 degrees and extreme humidity.

Scoble said on some occasions, Saindon insisted members of the team play through injuries.

"On that Thailand trip, for example, I sprained my thumb, and the physio wanted to tape it," she said.

Scoble's recollection of the event is backed by a support staff member who was on the tour.

For his part, Saindon recalled the Thailand tour as "the toughest trip I've ever been on".

"It was really difficult to be on the road that long and especially with young women who were 19, 20, 21, in a foreign land and training like crazy and trying to get better," he said.

He denied the allegations that he pushed the women too hard or asked them to play through injuries during his time coaching the team.

"We were training hard because we were training for an Olympic Games, but you can't train anybody if they're hurt, so we were really careful," he said.

Staying silent in fear of losing Olympic dream

ABC Sport spoke to several players who allege there was a culture of fear and intimidation in the AIS program run by Saindon.

"On any given day, we were fearful for our physical being, for our emotional being," Brett said.

"He would get up in the face of players as he yelled at them and belittled them for an absolutely meaningless issue."

Saindon denies the allegation.

"I'm in a foreign land coaching the national team of Australia," he said.

"I can't imagine that I would belittle anyone in that circumstance. I'm not that kind of a coach."

With the Olympics looming, the players said they were fearful to speak up.

"There's a carrot dangling in front of you," Brett said.

"Seeing no one else do anything about it, what's the point of complaining? All that will happen is we'll lose our Olympic spot."

They didn't even speak among themselves about their concerns over Saindon's coaching methods, apart from joking about it.

"I don't think any of us wanted to delve deeper," Brett said.

"It would be underpinned by humour because that was our coping mechanism."

But the reality was they weren't coping.

"The only way I figured out to get through training was just to disassociate my feelings," Scoble said.

"I didn't want to feel pain. I didn't want to feel the emotional heartache. I just learned to disconnect.

"But there was a lot of fear, a lot of anxiety," she said.

Brett was also experiencing extreme anxiety in the bedroom next door to her friend and teammate – particularly on Sunday nights as she imagined the week of training ahead.

In the period leading up to the Olympics, a clock at the AIS was counting down the days to the opening ceremony.

"I used that clock on the way out of training every day to count down the number of days I'd never, ever have to see Brad again," Scoble said.

"And it's really sad to reflect on that now, because that should have been the happiest, most exciting time of my life — but the reality was I couldn't wait to get out of there."

Some didn't make it.

The player who wanted to remain anonymous said she abandoned her Olympic dream, leaving the AIS program in 1999.

"I couldn't deal with it anymore," she said.

"I wasn't going to be put through that torture for another year just to be an Olympian."

And yet, both Scoble and Brett did make it through to the Sydney Olympics, despite the fear and intimidation they allege they'd experienced.

They have some fond memories of the team's ninth-placed finish at the Games, including Australia's only win over Kenya.

"It almost feels like getting to the Olympics was my gold medal, after everything I went through," Scoble said.

But they were both done.

Deeply scarred and walking away

After the Games, Scoble returned to Oregon State University to finish her degree, while Brett quit volleyball altogether.

"I still don't sleep on Sunday nights," Brett said.

"That physiological response stayed with me and the anxiety around it."

Scoble said her experiences at the AIS had also left deep scars.

"It's snowballed into depression and bulimia, and I have a lot of shame and guilt around that.

"I just wanted to push all the memories under the rug, I didn't want to talk about it."

Her memories remained buried for 20 years.

Saindon has denied all the allegations put to him by ABC Sport.

"I'm not that kind of a coach, I've never done that in my whole coaching career, let alone to the young women on the national team in Australia," he said.

Saindon left the AIS after the Sydney Olympics and was replaced by his former assistant, Mark Barnard.

The women described Barnard as "a jovial kind of guy," gregarious and even charming, but they say he should have stopped Saindon's alleged excessive training.

Although they do say he was able to lighten some situations through humour.

'More dominating, more intimidating'

Barnard was the head women's coach by the time Rowena Morgan was offered an AIS scholarship after the 2000 Games.

She was thrilled to get into the program, despite the whispers about the previous regime.

"There were horror stories about from some of the older players when we went on tour, but it was more of a joke I guess," Morgan said.

But after a while, she said Barnard's demeanour changed. Morgan said he was seemingly channelling the same extreme training she'd seen used by Saindon.

"He would yell abuse and nothing was good enough," she said.

"You know: 'You're f***ing useless. You're weak. If you played any other sport, you'd never get anywhere. You're pathetic. You disgust me.' That sort of thing."

Again, the coach-on-one drills were a feature. Morgan alleges they were used excessively and often for minor indiscretions like touching a net or missing a ball.

"You can hardly stand up and you don't know when it's going to finish," she said.

She described a time she was given a coach-on-one drill along with a teammate when neither went for a ball.

"We clashed heads halfway through and Mark just kept hitting the balls at us," she said.

The player, who had left in 1999, was encouraged to return to the program in 2001. She agreed to a three-month stint, thinking the program would be easier under Mark Barnard.

"When he (Barnard) was under Brad, he was the fun guy — he was the guy who got us through training because he could defuse situations," she said.

"I thought 'Mark surely won't coach like Brad'."

But she said within a week she knew something had changed.

Morgan said she lost any enjoyment for the game.

"Definitely the joy of playing and the want to win, was suddenly very close to not wanting to lose and not wanting to make a mistake," she said.

And as with her predecessors, she didn't share her experiences.

"I guess everybody sort of was a little bit 'every girl for herself'," she said.

"You're proud to be there as is and it feels very ungrateful to be complaining about the difficult environment and that people would be thinking again that you are weak. You are pathetic."

ABC Sport asked Mark Barnard to respond to the allegations against him. 

He replied in an email: "I appreciate the opportunity to respond to these allegations, however, I am not going to offer any comment towards these."

The Australian women failed to make the Athens Olympics in 2004. The following year the volleyball program at the AIS was defunded and wound up.

Morgan continued to play volleyball in a professional league in the Netherlands, which she found caring and supportive in contrast to her experiences in Australia.

Barnard moved to Scoble's old alma-mater Oregon State University (OSU), initially as an assistant, and then as head coach from 2016.

He was recruited to coach the national women's team again in 2015 and 2016 between US college seasons.

The matter may have ended there, were it not for a series of investigative reports by Associated Press about Barnard's Volleyball Program at OSU that were first published in 2020.

AP alleged 11 players had quit or transferred from the program since 2016, alleging abusive coaching.

"He'd call us entitled brats, a bunch of princesses, tell us how much we suck, and how we're unworthy of being here," one player told the news agency.

"He'd push players beyond the limits of what they physically and mentally could do," she said.

Oregon State University wouldn't comment on the allegations against Barnard.

In a press release written on his retirement, the university said he was leaving "to pursue other opportunities and explore his many interests outside of collegiate athletics."

When the reports about Barnard filtered back to Scoble through her old university connections, she couldn't believe what she was reading.

"I just started shaking, my heart started racing," Scoble said.

"It was like reading one of our own training sessions."

She immediately forwarded them to her former teammates.

It was then the dam burst.

'We knew we had to speak up'

For the first time, players revealed to each other how they'd been suffering in silence for 20 years, going back to the time they were living together at the AIS.

"I had no idea what some of my teammates were going through at the time," Scoble said through tears.

She said two girls had written in their diaries about harming themselves.

Scoble has an excerpt from one 18-year-old woman's diary at the time:

'Wednesday the 13th of January 1999: Brad keeps tearing shreds off me. Said he wants to cut me from the team. I'm f***ing so depressed. I don't know what to do. I just want to kill myself.'

Morgan was overcome with emotion recalling her helplessness in the face of her teammates' anguish.

"To know after, like, 20 years, that this was the traumas that they'd been through at the AIS and that I was there too, and I didn't know about it," she said.

The day after the first AP report was published, Volleyball Australia published a letter of support for Mark Barnard on its Facebook page.

The post said VA had contacted OSU and was advised the university had investigated the allegations and found that Barnard's conduct did not violate its bullying, retaliation or discrimination policies.

It said Barnard had "contributed significantly to the positive team culture that defines the Volleyroos".

The former players who made the complaints said the Facebook letter galvanised them.

"That post itself was infuriating for the group, because it was without any consultation with any of the past players," Morgan said.

A review, recognition and apology

The players contacted the Australian Athlete's Alliance (AAA) – the peak body for many of the country's top sport unions. With the help of AAA's CEO, Jacob Holmes, the players wrote to Volleyball Australia to outline allegations of harm done to them by a culture of fear and punishment. They called for an independent review to be conducted, and demanded VA's Facebook post about Barnard be removed.

So began a four-year process to get recognition and subsequently an apology from Volleyball Australia for what they allege they experienced at the AIS.

In October 2020, Sport Integrity Australia (SIA) was commissioned to review the culture of Australia's women's volleyball team during the period it was run out of the AIS between 1997 and 2005.

SIA interviewed 27 participants — including former medical staff — and received 16 written submissions.

SIA interviewed both Saindon and Barnard, but neither said they were asked about the players' allegations.

Barnard added he has since had no input in regards to the process and did not want to comment any further.

Both men said they were asked how they could improve the program, looking ahead to the 2032 Olympics in Brisbane.

The confidential review was completed in 2022 and found:

• A culture of fear and punishment;
• Unacceptable training practices;
• An inadequate complaints-handling procedure;
• A lack of coach accountability; and
• Limited athlete support

The report did not make findings about individuals within VA. Instead, it found the 'culture' of the program "caused harm to many players."

"The lack of oversight of coaching methods allowed unacceptable behaviour to go unchecked and when issues were raised, they were not addressed in an appropriate manner," the report said.

The year before, the Australian Sports Commission — which runs the AIS — had issued a wide-ranging apology to any athlete who had been "treated inappropriately in the past ".

"We know incidents and practices occurred that are not acceptable. For this, we are truly sorry," the apology read.

The apology followed revelations about the abuse of gymnasts at the AIS that were revealed by the ABC, and a human rights commission enquiry which investigated the sport.

The ASC apology paved the way for a Restorative Engagement process — open to all AIS scholarship holders from 1987 to 2013 — which would be run in conjunction with Volleyball Australia.

The ASC's chief executive, Kieren Perkins, was an Olympic swimmer and world record holder who trained for periods at the AIS from the late 1980s until the 2000 Olympics.

He could not comment on specific allegations as he had no involvement with volleyball.

But when asked by ABC Sport whether he was surprised at the allegations about the culture at the AIS by the former volleyball players, he replied: "there was nothing about any of it that surprised me at all."

"I lived through this system," he said.

"There was so much stuff that was just normalised that we joked about or that we saw and walked past, because we had grown in this system where you were basically indoctrinated to believe that's how you win."

Speaking generally about the AIS programs run in the lead up to the Sydney Olympics — rather than specifically about volleyball — he said there had been a mandate to accelerate Australia's sporting success.

"There were very deeply embedded ideologies around what it took to win," Perkins said.

"And the reality is, that led to mistakes.

"Because 'every young person needed to be broken down and rebuilt in the ideology of what a winner looks like'.

"Every time I hear those stories, I feel nothing but anguish."

As part of the restorative engagement process, a meeting was arranged for November 2023, that was to include Perkins, Holmes, the players, mediators, and Volleyball Australia's president Craig Carracher and CEO Andrew Dee.

Despite it being planned for months, on the eve of the meeting Carracher and Dee emailed to say they wouldn't be attending.

The move enraged the former players who had flown to Melbourne to be there.

"That was a real kick in the guts for us as a playing group," Morgan said.

"I think it demonstrated a complete lack of care and empathy for not only what we had been through as athletes, but the process that we have been through to get to that particular meeting."

ABC Sport asked Volleyball Australia why Carracher and Dee didn't attend the meeting, but it didn't respond to the question.

A meeting did go ahead with VA vice-president Anita Palm present, and two days later the Facebook post in support of Mark Barnard was taken down.

In July 2024, a full two years after SIA's report finding a culture of fear and intimidation, Volleyball Australia finally issued a public apology to the former players.

The apology did not specify any individuals who played a part in the culture, but acknowledged the former players suffered through "an environment of fear."

"We have heard that you experienced an environment of fear, unacceptable and punitive training practices, a lack of coach accountability, coaches disregarding advice from medical and performance support staff, limited athlete support and inadequate complaint-handling mechanisms," the apology read.

"We are deeply sorry for the ongoing effects these experiences have had on your life, and on your relationship with the sport of volleyball and with Volleyball Australia. We unreservedly apologise for that harm."

Jacob Holmes lacerated VA for the time it had taken to apologise, calling it "disappointing and disrespectful."

"Their action (and inaction) caused additional harm to the players and displayed a consistent disregard for the wellbeing of the players," Holmes said.

ABC Sport has asked VA why it took four years to produce an apology.

VA sent the ABC a statement which read:

"At all times, Volleyball Australia engaged in and actively participated in both the Sports Integrity Australia review and the subsequent Australian Sports Commission and athlete-led restorative engagement process. 

"Out of deference to the wellbeing of the athletes, other affected individuals and the restorative engagement process itself, together with honouring athlete and stakeholder wishes for confidentiality, Volleyball Australia declines to comment further."

Brad Saindon said he did not know