Written by For abusive cultures to survive and even prosper, the abusers need to be supported, they need facilitators. The facilitators are usually management or a funding agency with the role of facilitator varying dependent upon the individual circumstance.
Some facilitators of abuse in sport will claim to have not known what was going on. There have been many examples of these existing within elite sport in the UK – especially when the abuse is around athlete welfare. Supposedly we are being asked to believe that those who championed their examination of every facet to do with performance, a frenzied attention to detail, are the same people who had no idea that any of the athletes were being abused in the process. Really? Well don’t ask a question you don’t wish to know the answer to would be my response.
Then there are facilitators of abusive cultures who know what is going on, but believe the end justifies the means. If medals are won, why should they ask how they were won? Well oversight is one reason, another is responsibility, and a third reason would be an ethical decision to treat athletes as people rather than commodities working to enrich everybody involved in performance sport but themselves.
When I wrote a letter about bullying and athlete welfare issues that I had witnessed to the NGB I was told that the coach – someone the NGB funded – got results and therefore the ends justified the means. Really? There is no evidence to show that abuse of athletes improves results. There is plenty of evidence to show resilience and some sort of negative setbacks in their careers might help athlete to persevere and reach the top of the podium but abuse of athletes helping them to perform? Nope.
There is a third type of facilitator – one that truly doesn’t know what is going on. Some people are manipulated by friends or people they trust who then realise what has happened far too late. Often these facilitators won’t make it to the cut-throat nature of performance sport. Some from the first classification of facilitators will claim to be in this group – either way these people shouldn’t be in sport, they shouldn’t have responsibility for athlete’s welfare, and they shouldn’t be allowed to remain in sport covering these roles.
The media has increased its reporting of win-at-all costs sports cultures – both within the NCAA College sports in the U.S and the Olympic and Paralympic sports in the U.K in recent years. Due to a spate of athlete welfare reviews in cycling, swimming, athletics and gymnastics to name a few, UK Sport – the primary funding agency of Olympic and Paralympic sport – have spoken publicly of a change in culture, with focus on more than how many medals are won. The change in culture, focusing on athlete welfare alongside medal winning, suggests that in the past this balance wasn’t quite correct although UK Sport did deny that they would ever seek to win medals at any cost (Ingle, 2020).
In the US college programme reports are coming out that behaviours of star football players at top ranked football colleges such as LSU were facilitated because with these players in the team the team would do better. The lessons this teaches everybody involved is that abuse is acceptable and will be covered up because the greater good is to win. Those that continue to spread this messaging through their actions should also be gone from sport.
Being a coach, management or board member comes with a huge amount of credibility but should also come with similar accountability.
One clear example of facilitative behaviour within Olympic sport is the US Gymnastics handling of Dr Larry Nassar. Who knew what Nassar was doing? When did they find out? What did they do? And to those who did nothing, why? Athletes were also being abused physically by some of the gymnastics coaches at the same time – the same questions should be asked around how this abuse was facilitated?
A lot of the facilitators have found safe haven in new sports or in new nations in a similar manner to many who were directly involved with the abuse of athletes. Sport won’t really change until they are gone from sport for good.
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