When she falls ill in the training camp and is alone with the trainer, the young soccer player Marina* experiences martyrdom: “Attacks of all kinds started there, rape, shackles and whatever else you can imagine.” All too often, such acts remain without consequences, says the sports gymnast Senta*: “If you are not helped as a child, you learn to remain silent.”
A research team led by the sports sociologist Bettina Rulofs has compiled descriptions like these for the largest study to date on sexualized violence in German sports. 72 victims reported. It’s “a look at the dark side,” explains social psychologist Heiner Keupp, a member of the review commission that commissioned the study.
What needs to change in sport? “The basics,” Rulofs replies to DW. The professor at the German Sport University in Cologne calls for a cultural change: “We cannot accept sporting success if it occurs in a climate of pressure, abuse and violence.” Consequently, the focus of their study is not on finding out how many attacks there are, but on finding out more about the factors that favor such attacks, especially in sport.
Presentation of the abuse study in sport: Heiner Keupp, Bettina Rulofs and Angela Marquardt (from left to right) in Berlin
Global problem in sport
This shows that sport is no more and no less affected than other social groups. And it doesn’t make a difference whether it’s the swimming club around the corner or the national junior elite squad – the cases are similar. Coaches or supervisors often take advantage of the trust, the power imbalance and the opportunity to get physically close to children and young people in sport. This pattern applies worldwide, even in prominent cases such as the scandal surrounding sexualized violence in US gymnastics or the German ex-water jumper Jan Hempel, who made it public long after his career ended that he had been sexually abused by his coach for years.
Argentina, the Netherlands, Japan and other countries – in 2021, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime looked at the problem in a report and summarized it: “Abuse in sport is based on silence, complacency and continued abuse of power and trust , with the perpetrators feeling they can act with impunity.” The structures in sport were even compared to the power structure of patriarchal clan families.
Star gymnast and victim of sexualized violence: US gymnast Simone Biles went public with her teammates
Keupp: “No escape to prevention”
The reaction of clubs, associations and authorities to cases of sexualized violence in sport is often the same: the call for more prevention is getting louder. There are programs across the board. Club employees and volunteers are trained, contact persons for alleged victims are set up – in Great Britain, for example, the “National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children” takes care of this.
The EU’s ‘Pro Safe Sport’ program runs across Europe. In Germany, a ‘Safe Sport Center’ is to pool efforts. Initiated by the Athletes Germany association, which represents the interests of competitive athletes, the initiative received support from the Federal Ministry of the Interior, which in Germany is responsible for the sport, but the project is still on hold because the umbrella organizations of German sport have so far not wanted to participate in the financing.
Looking back is also much more difficult in Germany. On the occasion of the presentation of the study in Berlin, Munich professor emeritus Keupp warned against a “flight to prevention”. And Angela Marquardt from the Council of Affected Persons of the Independent Review Commission demands: “Sport must face up. It owes it to those affected who had the courage to speak out.” Individual clubs, such as HSV Weimar, in whose ranks a gymnastics coach had committed sexual violence, have agreed to an independent investigation. “A good example of how it can work,” says Marquardt.
Sports associations are too often timid
A look at New Zealand shows how bad things can go. Gymnasts had disclosed sexual abuse. After an investigation that brought clear grievances to light, the local gymnastics association simply commissioned another investigation, but did not feel bound by its recommendations. It was a “farce,” commented sports journalist Hamish Bidwell, concluding: “We have to be the ones driving this change because it doesn’t look like the sports federations have the drive to do it themselves.”
When asked about what would be of central importance in German sport, the sociologist Rulofs listed the following points: “Working through, acknowledging the victims and paying more attention to the issue in the clubs. We need better protection concepts for children and young people and communication centers where those affected be able to report without fear and follow up on the leads effectively.” Sport is not only fair, beautiful and healthy.
(* Names of those affected have been changed).
