Ju­ly 4, there was an Op/Ed in a dai­ly news­pa­per head­line “Dirty Old Men”. The is­sue ad­dressed by the colum­nist (Vaneisa Baksh) was valid and re­al. The writer high­light­ed the preva­lence of in­cest, rape, mo­lesta­tion of every kind per­pe­trat­ed on boys and girls.

The truth is not lim­it­ed to dirty old men, it’s men and women of var­i­ous ages. The is­sue is not on­ly in sport but all ar­eas of na­tion­al life.

Notwith­stand­ing the pub­li­cised ef­forts to ad­dress the sor­did re­al­i­ty, the huge chal­lenge is the cov­er­ing up. The con­se­quences be­ing, that peo­ple who have ques­tions to an­swer are able to get away. In the case of sex­u­al ha­rass­ment or crim­i­nal sex­u­al of­fences, vic­tims are in­tim­i­dat­ed in all forms.

Those who are brave enough to come for­ward are of­ten made out to be the vil­lain of the piece es­pe­cial­ly if it’s a high-pro­file sports, busi­ness, po­lit­i­cal per­son­al­i­ty or some­one per­ceived as pow­er­ful in any field or in­dus­try.

In a 19-2-2024 ar­ti­cle by Lars Jor­gensen on the Play the Game web­site the claim was made that: Sports or­gan­i­sa­tions are bad at han­dling sex­u­al abuse, and ath­letes risk re­tal­i­a­tion for speak­ing out.

Sev­er­al ses­sions at the Play the Game 2024 high­light­ed one of the biggest cur­rent chal­lenges in sports: Play­ers, coach­es, doc­tors, and man­agers in both poor and rich coun­tries who abuse their po­si­tions in sports to sex­u­al­ly ex­ploit chil­dren and young ath­letes.

There’s a cul­ture of se­cre­cy in sport.

Sports lead­ers of­ten pro­tect sex­u­al preda­tors.

The olympic.com web­site out­lines what sex­u­al ha­rass­ment and abuse may look like:

What is sex­u­al abuse?

Sex­u­al abuse is be­hav­iour to­wards an in­di­vid­ual or group that in­volves sex­u­alised ver­bal, non-ver­bal or phys­i­cal be­hav­iour, whether in­tend­ed or un­in­tend­ed, le­gal or il­le­gal, that is based up­on an abuse of pow­er and trust; Sex­u­al abuse in­volves any sex­u­al ac­tiv­i­ty where con­sent is not or can­not be giv­en; Sex­u­al abuse of­ten in­volves a process known as ‘groom­ing’.

How is groom­ing done?

Stages of groom­ing/The groom­ing process in sport

Tar­get­ing a po­ten­tial vic­tim

Ob­serv­ing which ath­lete is vul­ner­a­ble; find­ing oc­ca­sions to test her/him out for se­cre­cy and re­li­a­bil­i­ty; check­ing out her/his cre­den­tials as a sus­cep­ti­ble per­son; strik­ing up a friend­ship; be­ing nice.

Build­ing trust and friend­ship

Mak­ing her/him feel spe­cial; giv­ing gifts and re­wards; spend­ing time to­geth­er; lis­ten­ing, be­ing con­sis­tent, set­ting down ba­sic con­di­tions for each meet­ing, be­gin­ning to bar­gain “You have to do this, be­cause I have done that”.

De­vel­op­ing iso­la­tion and con­trol; build­ing loy­al­ty

Re­fus­ing the child ac­cess to sig­nif­i­cant oth­ers and or de­mean­ing any pre­vi­ous sources of friend­ship and sup­port; re­strict­ing ac­cess to or re­liance on par­ents and car­ers and non-sport peers; be­ing in­con­sis­tent, build­ing up hopes and joy one mo­ment and then pun­ish­ing the next to in­crease the child’s des­per­a­tion for at­ten­tion; check­ing the child’s com­mit­ment through ques­tion­ing and set­ting small tests.

Ini­ti­a­tion of sex­u­al abuse and se­cur­ing se­cre­cy

Grad­ual in­cur­sion in­to am­bigu­ous sex­u­al bound­aries; if ath­lete ob­jects say­ing “you didn’t mind last time” to en­trap her; in­vok­ing co-op­er­a­tion “you owe me/it’s the least you can do”; in­vok­ing guilt “now look what you’ve done”; of­fer­ing pro­tec­tion “I won’t tell/it’s our lit­tle se­cret”; dis­cred­it­ing the vic­tim so she has no choice but to re­main “oth­ers won’t un­der­stand” or “no­body will be­lieve you”; threat­en­ing the vic­tim “if you tell any­one I’ll hurt you/tell oth­ers what you’ve done/hurt some­one you care about/drop you from the team…”

[Source: Brack­en­ridge, C.H. (2001) Spoil­sports: Un­der­stand­ing and pre­vent­ing sex­u­al ex­ploita­tion in sport. Lon­don: Rout­ledge, p. 35.]

The re­al sto­ry be­hind why some young sports­men and women may have dropped out of sports is a dark and un­safe one.