Sadly, in just the last month we have witnessed horrible child sex crimes surface at Penn State and Syracuse, finally directing much needed national attention toward a growing problem in our country today. Yes, as much as we would like to not admit it, there are thousands of kids each year who compete in sports and fall prey to adult pedophiles who take advantage of the trust and rapport built through the coach-student athlete relationship. While most of these cases go unreported by the victims (usually due to guilt, shame, and embarrassment), there are still more than enough stories out there that can be read about by doing a Google search. I can also report that in my role as a clinician, I have witnessed firsthand the number of these cases emerge – prompting me to work with various state and national leaders in sports to help change laws and training requirements.
At Penn State, many staff and college personnel have lost their jobs, with more expected to go in the months ahead as Jerry Sandusky goes to court. At Syracuse, Bernie Fine has been dismissed, and head coach Jim Boeheim may not be far behind after he blasted the victims and accused them of looking to capitalize financially, rather than stop for a moment to think they might really have been raped by his good friend and colleague. Boeheim might be a great basketball coach, but he failed terribly in showing zero compassion and sympathy for the victims of Bernie Fine.
Even ESPN, the self-proclaimed “worldwide leader in sports,” is also feeling the heat today after reportedly sitting on potential evidence pertaining to the Syracuse sex scandal and not doing anything about it for eight years. Today, ESPN responded to the charges they face from the public for sitting idle. Regardless of the thin veil ESPN has in defending their actions because they are “journalists,” it does make you wonder how anyone could sit on this kind of information from a moral sense. If you heard a tape that included comments like Larry Fine’s wife’s did, wouldn’t you report it to the police??
When any of us come into information about a child sex crime we all need to report and support! In other words, we need to report the crime to authorities and support the victim for the courage it takes to talk about the crimes that were alleged to have occurred. Of course, this may not be easy to do — especially if you know the alleged perpetrator, but it is the right thing to do. Trust me, as a clinician I can tell you that child sex abuse is as scarring and damaging as anything a young person can ever experience, and it is for this reason that we all must do a better job in protecting kids from pedophiles.
Why these problems in sports are important to address
While we have made great strides in training youth and interscholastic coaches over the years, one area we still fall terribly behind in pertains to training coaches about appropriate boundaries. Ironically, we have made tremendous progress teaching coaches about about nutrition, injury management, and concussions, but yet we still haven’t made the progress we need to when it comes to properly training youth and interscholastic coaches about appropriate, healthy, and safe boundaries. The coach-athlete relationship is arguably the most dangerous relationship as it applies to sex abuse for a number of reasons:
- Most parents unconditionally trust coaches to be responsible with their kids. Sadly, some pedophiles know this quite well, and as a result take advantage of how easily it is to become a coach today. Of course, most coaches do a great job of working with kids and would never think of harming a child, but it is never advised to blindly trust anyone with your kids.
- Sports provide many unique places for inappropriate relationships to take place, including locker rooms, hotels, and after hours at schools waiting for parents to pick up kids after practice.
- The fraternal bonding often found in sports can sometimes go over the line unknowingly, as Jerry Sandusky’s comments about “horsing around in the shower” revealed to us. Usually by the time a child is sexually molested, it happens as a result of slow and steady trust developed over time, which often includes “normalizing” inappropriate fraternal relationships
- Teacher-coaches, once comprising of almost all coaching jobs in schools, has now become a memory of the past. Today’s roughly 75% (or more) of coaches in schools today are non-teacher coaches. Due to the dearth of teacher-coaches available, increasingly more schools have had to reach out to their local community in order to find adults willing and interested in coaching. As a result, in some cases, the hiring process happens very quickly out of the school’s desperate need for a coach, and often the newly hired coach does not have a background search completed, nor is he given proper training and mentoring.
- State and national standards are still lagging, as there are no formal continuing education requirements today that mandate coaches to better understand boundaries with kids, as well as warning signs and appropriate protocols for when a youngster bravely steps forward to report a crime. This needs to change ASAP!
Last year we developed Sport Success 360 as a tool for schools and youth leagues to use to better prepare coaches with respect to psychosocial training in sports. Some of the training modules are traditional (i.e. communicating effectively with parents), while others are more contemporary (i.e. dealing with youth sports burnout). We also developed a module to address inappropriate boundaries, offering coaches, parents, and student athletes keen insights and tips to help prevent, respond, and report issues when they occur. I urge you to learn more about Sport Success 360, and especially the training offered around boundaries, as we can see this issue is certainly one that we can no longer ignore or overlook.
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