Michael Hartill

The Sexual Abuse of Boys in Organized Male Sports

Childhood sexual abuse (CSA) is now a significant issue for organized sports. Since its “discovery” thirty years ago, research on CSA has been guided mostly by the “maleperpetrator—female victim” paradigm; hence, the perspective of the sexually abused male in the sports context has rarely been considered. This article considers organized male-sports as a social space that facilitates the sexual abuse of boys. Through promoting a sociological perspective on child abuse rather than an individualized and pathologized approach, I consider how the institutions of childhood, masculinity, and sports fit together and the contribution that sports make to the adult—child relation. I use Spiegel’s ecosystems model of the sexually abused male (SAM) and the sociology of sports literature to identify how some normative features of male sports contribute to the sexual abuse of male children.

Concealment of child sexual abuse in sports.

When the sexual abuse of children is revealed, it is often found that other nonabusing adults were aware of the abuse but failed to act. During the past twenty years or so, the concealment of child sexual abuse (CSA) within organizations has emerged as a key challenge for child protection work. Recent events at Pennsylvania State University (PSU) received unprecedented media coverage and many commentators observed similarities with the abuse scandals in organized religion. Drawing upon Pierre Bourdieus critique of the Catholic Church, this article problematizes the emphasis on the moral failings of individual elites, arguing that concealment of CSA is an historical feature of organized sport. It concludes that the emergence of child protection agendas in sport must be accompanied by more reflexive analyses about youth-sport if we are to significantly improve our capacity to safeguard children and young people from sexual violence within sport and physical education contexts.

Sexual harassment and abuse in sport: The NOC*NSF helpline

Following a high-profile case of child sexual abuse in sport in 1996, the Netherlands Olympic Committee and the Netherlands Sports Confederation (NOC*NSF) established a telephone ‘helpline’ service on sexual harassment and abuse (SHA). In order to expand their understanding of this problem, NOC*NSF maintained written records of incidents reported to the helpline. These records revealed 323 separate incidents for the period 2001 to 2010. This paper presents a descriptive analysis of this data and discusses the findings. We conclude that whilst there are major limitations to working with information gathered in this way, a sustainable telephone ‘helpline’ can provide a valuable service for the sports community. Whilst official sources of data are known to under represent the scale of sexual abuse, through collaboration with researchers, such services can also generate important information for policymakers.

Reports of child protection and safeguarding concerns in sport and leisure settings: an analysis of English local authority data between 2010 and 2015

ABSTRACT The abuse of children in sport has received considerable attention in recent years not least in the UK, where high-profile disclosures of abuse by former sports professionals have led to several independent inquiries and reviews. Subsequent public and media interest has focused on the potential scale of child abuse in sport. This scrutiny has highlighted how little data there are in this area, in a sector that thrives on statistics. This paper analyses official reports of child abuse in sport and leisure settings received by local authorities (LAs) in England during a five-year period (2010–2015) across a range of factors. Findings show that English LAs have varying capacity to provide data on sport/leisure contexts; receive substantively different volumes of reports of child abuse in sport/leisure; and record reports of sexual abuse in sport at higher levels than other forms of abuse. These data suggest that abuse in English sport is significantly underreported but that reports per annum increased over the period.