The case of former US gymnastics team doctor Larry Nassar changed the media and institutional paradigm regarding sexual harassment and abuse in sport, until now a ‘taboo’ under a curtain of silence.
Nassar’s sentence to more than 100 years in prison, after having sexually abused more than 100 underage girls over three decades of practice at the highest level of North American gymnastics, is a paradigmatic case of this phenomenon.
It has long been talked about in the sector as a type of violence that is known to occur, but without complaints or real consequences, apart from the occasional isolated case, the subject is more and more on the media agenda and promoting institutional change.
The disclosure of Nassar’s crimes, which was denounced by dozens of athletes in the midst of a scandal in US gymnastics, including Olympic champions McKayla Maroney, Aly Raisman and Gabby Douglas, helped to ‘turn’ the culture of silence around of the phenomenon.
It was not the first case to be reported in the media, nor tried in court, like the former doctor and professor, sentenced for the first time in 2017, adding to successive additional sentences.
Even so, this case ended up emerging within the scope of a wider movement than sport, the so-called ‘#MeToo’, which began by encompassing complaints against former film producer Harvey Weinstein to ‘spread’ to the world of culture in general, through politics and sport.
In Portugal, several footballers who played in Rio Ave in 2020/21 denounced, in an article published last week by the Público newspaper, actions of sexual harassment by the then coach of the Vila do Conde club Miguel Afonso, who was currently the coach of Famalicão, having Sports director Samuel Costa was also subject to disciplinary proceedings.
This lawsuit comes in parallel with the publication of an independent report that found evidence of a “systemic” practice of sexual harassment and abuse, as well as emotional abuse, in American women’s football.
The investigation of more than a year found in the main League a problem that encompasses “multiple teams, coaches and victims”, with abuse “rooted in a deeper culture of women’s football, of Leagues for children and young people, where a type of abusive training”.
The cases range from a coach who showed pornographic films to a player while he masturbated, to numerous examples of sexual coercion, part of a ‘sea’ of “deeply problematic” reports, as US federation president Cindy Parlow admitted, herself a former international player.
The report does not only concern the type of abuse faced by athletes and young athletes in women’s soccer in the United States, but also the way in which, in general, the various institutions that govern the sport, from the League to US Soccer and the clubs themselves, failed to protect victims and failed to respond adequately to complaints and indications.
This League brought, from 2021, another ‘scandal’, by Paul Riley, coach of the North Carolina Courage, by coercion, and who instigated a movement in that championship but that arrived in Venezuela, where several internationals denounced the coach, Kenneth Zsemremeta.
Studies indicate, moreover, a more than residual percentage of children and young people who claim to have suffered some type of harassment or sexual abuse during their careers, although in Portugal few or no studies include concrete data on the country.
In February this year, the National Observatory on Violence against Athletes revealed that it had received 20 complaints since the project started in September 2020.
The numbers relate to complaints that may have been made by victims or former victims or by anyone who has witnessed an episode of violence. The average age of the victims was below 18 years.
Most of the reported violence was directed at more than one or one athlete, with 13 female victims or ex-victims, with an average age below 18 years.
The numbers typify the type of aggression, predominantly sexual abuse or harassment, with a majority of international athletes among the victims, the predominance of complaints by the female gender and the accused as being male.
Most cases report face-to-face violence, with almost half of the situations happening every day, with various modalities included, including football.
Back in the United States, the country where these cases most appear in the light of justice and public perception, former coach Andy King was sentenced to 40 years in prison after a pattern of sexual abuse spanning more than 30 years was discovered, in several clubs, with more than a dozen adolescent athletes, having been arrested in 2009, one of 100 coaches banned from sport in that country after an investigation.
In English football, a police report is based on 741 victims who came forward to detail allegations, old or recent, against close to 300 individuals, including coaches and occupants of other roles in the world of sport, in the specific case regarding sexual abuse of children.
The English Football Association commissioned an independent investigation into the way in which it dealt with complaints and other allegations prior to 2005, with basketball, gymnastics, athletics, swimming, tennis and rugby, among others, also covered by ‘Operation Hydrant ‘ carried out by law enforcement authorities from 2015 onwards, and of which close to 30% of the cases led to a conviction.
