Written by How do you feel about athlete abuse?
How do you feel about athlete abuse when it’s in your sport? Is it still abuse?
How do you feel about athlete abuse when it’s by your friend? Is it out of character?
Loyalty to sport and people we know and/or admire is a positive in sports culture. Its why so many sports fans support the same team throughout their lives and why supporting one team in each sport is seen as more acceptable behaviour that supporting a few. By extension we are then loyal to the players that do well and the coaches that perform well. More often than not this is around results but how the sport is played can also be a factor for our increased positive feelings towards the players and coaches. When the same people then transgress with cheating, doping, or abuse the same loyalty that is viewed within society as positive, can become hugely negative. The target of their emotional response is to turn on the whistleblower to these transgressors rather than the perpetrator.
When the systematic abuse of athletes in gymnastics started to become more public in the summer of 2020 – some within the sports initial response was to protect the image of gymnastics and those who were being accused of athlete abuse. I was blocked by an Olympic gymnast on Twitter around this time for suggesting he listen to the words of survivors instead of trying to quiet them. He felt he was protecting his sport whilst also giving describing a positive side to the character of those accused of abuse.
This is not an uncommon circumstance in sport. Many sports fans and commentators will point to doping issues in sports culture, if they are in different sports or from different countries, to the one they identify with most. The same people are then suspiciously quiet when it is their sport, their country and someone they are friends with or admire who has been doing the very same actions they were so vocal about previously. This is also seen with abusive behaviours in which benefit of the doubt is given to coaches or management we know and have a personal link with, whilst being outspoken if it is a rival.
I don’t believe our ego can handle being friends with – or admiring someone – who is an abuser. It becomes about their impact on us rather than the impact their behaviours have had on survivors. Countless times I have heard an explanation similar to ‘but I know him’ or ‘that’s not like her’ when describing people who have been accused of bullying or abusive behaviours towards athletes. Humans are hugely complex, and it is perfectly reasonable to assume some athletes have inherently positive experiences with abusive coaches. Athletes who abuse their athletes might not do it all the time, or to all athletes.
We all have different experiences of people for hugely varied reasons – here is a short story to give as an example. Ted Bundy – the notorious serial killer of women – would often stalk his female victims in multi-storey car parks. One day in a multi-storey car park he spotted a woman being mugged and chased down the assailant retrieving the woman’s purse. To her, he would be a kind Samaritan going above and beyond, but in reality, if she hadn’t been mugged, she might have been another of his victims.
To finish I suggest a little challenge. When reading the testimony of an athlete’s experiences of abuse in your sport – try and suspend judgement – remove the part that causes personal conflict – and read it once more. Quite often we introduce subjective measurements when it is personal that we wouldn’t when it isn’t. If it isn’t your sport or someone you know this time, think about how would you want your sport to react if it was? How would you react?
As ‘Believed’, a podcast on the abuses of high profile doctor Larry Nassar, tells us: start with believing.