Prioritizing Child Safety Over Gold Medals: Learning from Abuse Survivors in Sports
*Content Warning: child abuse and trauma, read with care*
The whole world watches the Olympics and Paralympics, and national pride and achievement are front and centre. In today’s post, VicHealth postdoctoral research fellow Aurélie Pankowiak (@AureliePanko) of Victoria University (@iHealthSportVU) argues more resources need to be invested to ensure sport participants are safe from abuse. Learning from lived experience would allow for trauma-informed guidelines for both prevention and response and enable the creation of safer sport organisations.
Celebrating the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games might be difficult for the many who were abused by the sporting institution
Some things are more important than winning. Photo credit: Photo by Luca Dugaro on Unsplash
As a French citizen, born and raised in the Paris area, a part of me feels excited that my home city will be host to two of the biggest sporting events in the world from July to September 2024. As is the case for many, playing sport had an import role for my wellbeing during my childhood. Unfortunately, sport was also the setting where I experienced sexual abuse throughout my teenage years by my basketball coach. So, my excitement is buried in layers of feelings of injustice and betrayal by the sporting institution.
The next couple of months will be a period of celebration and achievement for many athletes and sport fans. For those for whom sport has been a setting for abuse, exclusion and disempowerment, the Games might be a difficult period. In my research on child abuse prevention in sport, and in my personal experience as an active survivor-advocate involved in diverse initiatives, I continue to observe and experience the ongoing injustice of the reporting and legal systems, and the poor treatment by these systems of those with lived experience of emotional, physical and sexual abuse.
This sense of injustice was recently exacerbated when the Dutch Olympic Committee selected an athlete who is a convicted child sexual abuser. This selection was not challenged (at least not publicly) by the International Olympic Committee, despite survivor-led advocacy organisations, mainstream media and the general public denouncing the decision. The selection disrespects not only the person he abused, but all those who experienced abuse in sport and other institutions. The selection also undermines the International Olympic and Paralympic Committees’ visions to “build a better world” and “inspire and excite the world” through sport.
While sport does bring benefits to health and wellbeing, according to our recent Australian study it is also a setting where many children experience emotional, physical and sexual abuse, including at the grassroots level. Historically, governments around the world have invested millions of public funding in national elite sport policies, with the aim to develop elite athletes to increase their country’s chances for winning medals at the Olympic and Paralympic Games. In contrast, policies regulating the sector to safeguard the emotional and physical safety and wellbeing of athletes have not been at the forefront of decision making, though this is changing.
National child safeguarding policies
In Australia, national child safeguarding policies in sport (i.e. policies preventing and responding to child abuse in sport), and legislation (in some jurisdictions) through the Child Safe Standards, in line with the National Principles for Child Safe Organisations have been playing catch-up. These developments are likely the result of reactive responses to victim-survivors of abuse and their allies speaking up, and accumulating evidence from academics and national commissions on child abuse in sport.
Sport Integrity Australia (SIA), is a national government agency created on the 1st of July 2020, set out by the Sport Integrity Australia Regulations 2020 as a response to the Wood “Review of Australia’s Sport Integrity Arrangement”, which, amongst other things, highlighted the findings of the Royal Commission Into Institutional Child Sexual Abuse. The role of SIA is to provide advice and assistance to counter sport integrity issues: anti-doping, competition manipulation, bullying, harassment and discrimination against all members involved in sport (also called ‘member protection’), and child abuse (child safeguarding). Sport Integrity Australia has a wide scope of action, ranging from reinforcing the National Integrity Framework and delivering education to national sport organisations, to responding to community complaints about abuse in sport. As sport has historically functioned autonomously, free from government and legislative interference, regulations are an important step forward in promoting safety in sport.
However, and in line with my own experience of going through investigations as a victim-survivor within the sporting institution in France, the mere existence of SIA is unlikely to provide a safe platform to children and adults reporting what they’ve experienced. Even systems like those within SIA that are meant to facilitate disclosures of abuse can themselves cause trauma and abuse. According to the experience of a young sport participant, SIA’s policies and procedures are not child-friendly nor trauma-informed, with SIA currently being investigated by the Australian Humans Rights Commission for age discrimination during its investigative procedures.
Reporting systems within and outside sport organisations are a necessary element of a public health response to child abuse. When people report concerns about a child in potential danger, ideally the response system addresses the perpetrator’s behaviours and supports people impacted by the abuse. Too often, those who experience child abuse in sport do not report the abuse in the first place. Even when they do, they face repeated requests to detail their experience with no proper support, and lengthy investigations conducted by individuals who are not trained in trauma-informed interactions. These procedures can leave the individual who disclosed abuse feeling, at best, alone and overwhelmed, and at worst, retraumatised by the system meant to be helping them. Beyond the impact to that individual, the potential broader consequences of such unsafe reporting systems include: 1/ children and families leaving sport, potentially impacting their physical activity levels and community connection, 2/ abusive behaviours remaining unaddressed and perpetrators unidentified.
We need change and hope, and to create this change, we must include those with lived experience of abuse in sport in child safeguarding research, policy and practice.
Engaging lived experience expertise
A solution that I am exploring in my VicHealth Research Fellowship is the engagement of those with lived experience of child abuse in sport to inform public health responses to create safer sporting environments and reporting systems. Many of us who are survivors of abuse in sport are driven by a desire to change society so that what happened to us doesn’t happen to others. For some, this is manifested by a drive for advocacy, to change the structures that oppressed and harmed us. Engaging those with lived experience to improve systems and practice has a history in mental and general health services and in domestic violence research and services.
Lived experience expertise values personal experience as a valid and important source of knowledge. In my experience both as a victim-survivor and as a researcher, sporting bodies have not effectively engaged us. We have very little scientific evidence on what effective engagement looks like in practice. If those with diverse lived experience of abuse were actively and safely engaged in decision-making in sport and other institutions, organisations would likely become safer. In addition, some victim-survivors could feel that their suffering was not in vain if they were genuinely listened to and if their concerns were acted upon. For example, while SIA has an athlete advisory council, it is unclear what their role is in child abuse prevention. It is possible that individuals on the advisory council or within SIA have lived experience of abuse in sport, and it is the right of those with lived experience to be involved and remain anonymous. However, if engagement of lived experience is something that is valued by SIA and other sport organisations, this should be made clear in its principles of engagement. Two organisations that I have a positive experience with have been The Army of Survivors (USA) and the Sport & Right Alliance (Global), both survivor-led.
Sport is powerful in shaping communities and societies. As long as the most powerful, such as the IOC, allows convicted child sexual abusers to represent the highest status in sport and does not address the concerns of those with lived experience, it is likely that the road to making sport safer will be very difficult. Creating sport environments that are safe and redressing the injustice and harm done to those with lived experience of abuse (by people and response system) will take time. Only with the right leadership and the safe and inclusive engagement of those with lived experience, will the sporting institution head in the right direction.
Aurélie Pankowiak currently holds a VicHealth Postdoctoral Research Fellowship which examines creating safe and enjoyable physical activity and sporting opportunities for Victorian children and young people. Her views may not reflect the position of VicHealth.
Posted by Susan Maury (@SusanMaury)