S5E7 Violence in Institutions: Abuse in Sport

Welcome to the Sexual Violence Research Podcast from S-V-R-I. I'm Aisha Margo. We're working towards a world free from violence against women and violence against children, and we believe good evidence is essential to getting there. Each episode we talk with the people building the evidence and putting it to work. Today we're looking at abuse in sport. Sport is often celebrated for its power to inspire, connect communities and transform lives. For many people it's a source of joy, identity and opportunity. Sport can also be a place where power is abused, where harmful behaviour is normalized, and where institutions fail to protect the people who are participating and work around it. From grassroots clubs to elite competition around the world, we've seen patterns of sexual abuse, emotional abuse, bullying, coercion, discrimination and online harassment, affecting not only athletes and players but also coaches, officials, referees, journalists and others. The challenge is not simply identifying individual perpetrators, increasingly researches, survivors and advocates are asking harder questions about the cultures, systems and power dynamics that allow abuse to continue. So what does abuse in sport actually look like on the ground? Why do institutions so often struggle to respond effectively? And what can evidence from survivors and practitioners tell us about prevention? To explore these questions, I'm joined by Joanna Mahau, an Olympian swimmer and network coordinator at the Sports and Rites Alliance, and Roshika Dio, gender equality, disability and social inclusion and safeguarding advisor for team up. Australia's flagship sport for development programme in the Pacific. Joanna faced sexual abuse by her swimming coach as a young girl and over the years has worked tirelessly to fight for survivors' rights. So I started by asking her what led her to speak up publicly about her own experiences and how has that decision shaped the work she does today? This is such an interesting question. I think I have to go back to what made me to speak out. First, I was really asking people for a pause because it happened when I was nine and I only spoke up about it when I was 21. So I went through the entire process of trying to deny that something has happened. Sports in my case swimming was somehow giving things back to me. So I could literally block those memories as we know that it's very common to survivors. But as those memories came back, I was already an Olympian, I was already an Olympic finalist. So there was like this expectation from the public that in four years, I wouldn't just compete to make the final but rather to compete to in a medal. And that's not something that I could deliver because I was going through the entire process of remembering everything. So when I spoke up, I did not have the intention to mention his name. I was literally just asking like, I cannot perform to the level that you want me now. I was so naive. I didn't know about statues of limitations. I didn't know about other victims. I had no idea that this was a pattern and that there were so many other girls and boys that he harmed. But then later on through the entire process came this realization that the problem was way deeper and way more complex. And then it kind of like shifted. I kind of like has walked in the advocate in me and I wanted to do more. I wanted to avoid this from happening to others. I kind of like started to understand the pattern in sport. And I really wanted to become more than my own story. I have no issues talking about my story today. I have a lot of self-care routine and years and years of therapy that really allows me to speak about it without so much of the retraumatization. But I wanted to become more than that. I also learned that storytelling and research they can be so powerful when you combine them together for advocacy purposes. I mean storytelling can grasp people's attention and sports and holds sports governing bodies accountable for a small period of time. But when you combine that with research it just becomes way more more powerful. So over time I wanted the same thing where for different purposes. But in the end there's one thing in common is that I want to make the nine year old me proud. Whenever I'm lost, whenever I'm like overwhelmed by doing this work, I close my eyes, I literally see myself smiling at me and I can see that this little girl is proud of everything that we have done. So in the end I'm still connected to her. She felt so lonely back then, so lost. So sometimes I even speak to her saying like see we're still doing this. Like you were right, you were not, you did nothing wrong and we're still here. But yeah, at the end of the day I want this to stop happening because I love sport and I believe in sport. I can only trust a sport 100% when we start fixing it. First and foremost, obviously, thank you so much for your courage in speaking out. Not just to the nine year old you, but I think to all the other nine year olds out there. But Rochica, just to turn to you, I mean we've seen many high profile cases of abuse and violence in sport, of course. And so team up, which you work for, works with sport organizations across the Pacific on safeguarding and inclusion and to respond to exactly this, to respond to what China has, has just actually started talking about. So can you tell us what does abuse and sport look like in practice and then also walk us through what, what a safeguarding in sport then look like and why is it essential to good sports programs and to strong institutions? Yeah, abuse in sports in practice from my experience looks like fear, anxiety, domination, threats, isolation and more. So a culture where silence has become the norm and where perpetrators are protected. Because I know they're well known, they're very charismatic, they're part of the boys network, they're part of the patriarchal system. They're essentially untouchable. I have to say last year we had a regional sporting tournament in the Pacific and sexual abuse in sport in practice, like where we have got documented data because we really only started doing this work in the last four, five years in terms of, you know, doing safeguarding and creating awareness and breaking the silence of culture in the last four, five years. And we realized that, you know, it also looks like athletes are perpetrators too. You know, things like, you know, masturbation in front of an unwilling person is so normalized, insistence by an adult to form a sexual relationship with a minor during a tournament or even the non-concentral filming of a minor athlete. Like all of these things have become so normalized within the sporting culture, within the context that many people, you know, don't realize that this is what abuse looks like in practice in sport. I also have to mention, you know, abuse also looks like, you know, an older coach grooming a young player who's not necessarily a child, but a young player that they are coaching and then forming a relationship with the player, getting a pregnant so she drops out of the sport, but continuing that same thing, the same pattern of abuse with other players. And when finally, you know, a player has the courage to report this form of sexual harassment, the coach only gets a couple of months' suspension and then back then coaching the same team. And this is what it looks like in practice, but in many times in so many cultures around the world, including in my region, it's become so normalized that people don't even, I lead many times. In relation to safeguarding, as I mentioned, it's worth that we've only really systematically started doing in the last four, five years. And there's a lot more discussion and awareness happening in the region around this, but in terms of the world the team up does, you know, it is not only about preventing abuse or any risk of abuse or harm, but it's also about being prepared to respond to harm or any risk of harm. So not waiting for the harm to occur, but if they are risk, they're present being able to address those risks. We also instill policies and systems that can pick up poor practices that can escalate into a safeguarding issues. So for us, that's also equally important in the same guiding work that we do. So it's not only about the prevention and the response, but also about the poor practices that can escalate into safeguarding issues. Maybe the one other thing that we've had to focus on in our region especially is sometimes the policy work is a lot more simple, but it's about the cultural change that is a lot more difficult. It's about changing the values, it's about changing the attitudes, it's about changing the behavior, especially in sporting organizations or institutions that are dominated by men or dominated by patriarchal values. So it is even more difficult to change the culture around the sport. So even if you have a policy, it doesn't get implemented because the system doesn't get set in place. And even when the system gets set in place, then the culture doesn't change. So nothing really gets put into action. Just picking up on what you've just said about institutions and that need for a very seismic sort of shift. So Joanna, you've argued, right, that abuse in sports is not just about individuals, it's not just that culture, that one perpetrator or that athlete, it's really about institutions. And in your experience, what do you see as the main systems, power dynamics, the kind of culture? that allows abuse to continue unchecked. What is your experience with this? - I think that where sport is quite particular is because it benefits from a lot of autonomy to regulate itself. Like even through different kind of sports. Like if you think I was a swimmer, my husband was a judoka. So there's a specific federation that regulates swimming and there's a specific regular organization that regulates judo because the norms are so different 'cause the sport are so different. So that gives the sector a large room for making decisions with almost zero accountability. And what we say is that when it comes to the rules of the game, yes, you should have some level of autonomy. When it comes to human rights, when it comes to safeguarding, not really. You can just speak and choose what you're gonna do or how you're going to do it. There's also the fact that to the public, there's this positive perception that sport is inherently good. And I say this, it can be. I always say I live the best and the worst in the same space. So I do believe and I will always hold space to the good. But the fact that sport has this positive perception by the majority of the population makes it really harder for us to address these violations and get support when we are addressing these violations. And some people say they were trying to damage the reputation of sport. I argue that we actually love sport more than you. They're just trying to put it down and then shy away. So sport kind of like responds reactively and then treats cases by punctual, instead of a systemic issue, which Rashika has alluded to. And then when we normalize that some people can be dehumanized on behalf of performance, the result cannot be good. I love to make the parallel between school and sport. Like if there is a student, a child that is not understanding the contact. For instance, my son, he's an immigrant, he's a Brazilian. If he was not understanding German for some extent, yelling at him or calling him names, it wouldn't make him understand that the language would it. But then when it comes to sports, and somehow we started to believe that this is the best way to make people perform, that this is the best way to make children perform. And there is no evidence to it. Evidence actually says the opposite. Evidence says that a coaching style, and I'm here talking about the relationship between coach and athlete. And although anyone can be a perpetrator of violence and sport, the coach and athlete kind of like dictates how other relationships are going to take place in sport. So a coaching athlete relationship that prioritizes the well-being, agency, and the voice of the athlete leads to better performance. I'm not saying that if you want to go all the way to the Olympic level, there's not going to be some level of physical and mental discomfort. God knows that I, for a decade, I had to wake up at 4.30 to go to the pool, then to go to school, then to go to the organ. But I wanted to do that. I consented to do that. And we're also not rejecting the idea of autonomy. We're just saying that we can make good use of the autonomy and the authority that you have. I always say that no one is in love with their work 24/7. Everyone's gonna wake up one morning and say like, "Ugh, I don't really feel like going to work." A sport is the same. I don't really feel like going to the pool and swimming 10k. I'm tired of doing that. Those are the days where a coach or someone in a position of authority can make good use of that authority, not to push you, but to remind you of the goal that you committed to a couple of months ago, because no one is motivated 24/7. So there is a difference, and this is something that we need to shift. And I think it's really important for us to think on the end goal, which is to get to that culture shift. But at the same time, we need to find ways to hold sports governing bodies accountable, because this culture shift is gonna take so long and we can't just wait and then see so many people being harmed on the way. So while we're working towards a culture shift, we need to have systems in place to hold sports governing bodies who don't have safeguarding system and children safeguarding structures in place. - Yeah. And Aisha, I just wanted to pick up on a point on the Joanna-Sate in relation to that. A lot of the time people assume that sports are inherently good and that there's no violence in sports, and it is violence-free. From our experience of working in sport for development programs in the region, we work across seven Pacific Island countries and have over 35 programs. And we found that these kind of attitudes can become a barrier in terms of being able to put in safeguarding measures or to even address safeguarding issues. So it is so important for us to also demystify this kind of narrative that sports is inherently good and violence-free. Or then my sport is, it doesn't have violence, but your sport has violence just because it may be a combat sport, et cetera. So this kind of demystification is so important, especially if we want to sustainably prevent and respond to abuse and harm in sport. - No, absolutely. This is actually so interesting 'cause I'm just thinking just personally my own attitude to sport or like the encouragement I will always give my kids, for instance, like you must do sport. Again, inherently sports must be good if you're out on the field, if you're in a team, if you're working with a coach, that's gotta be better than most other things that you might take up. There is a sort of inherent deep rooted assumption of that, which definitely obscures the concept that those sorts of environments can also be environments where harm can occur. So Johnny, you're absolutely right. Like we think like that coach screaming at people and saying sometimes terrible things to them is that this is a part of sport. This is how you're tough. This is how you live up to this sort of identity and the kind of concept of physical and mental endurance that we all associate with sports. So there is that very deep rooted cultural acceptance, I think we have of a certain type of treatment that it's almost kind of what we think of when we think of the military. Now that you're saying it, those are the thoughts that are coming into my head. - Can I just share something? It's just really, even having the understanding through time that I went through something so severe, there was not needed for me to make to the Olympic level. The first time that a coach asked me if I wanted to do something, it wasn't 2015 when I was almost 30. So I was going to my fourth Olympics to my fourth Pan American Games and he was like, oh, I can see that you train really hard. Is there in a specific training that you don't like to do? And I was like, what, I'm sorry? Do I have a voice to say what I don't like to do? And I was so shocked. First I was emotional to hear that that he was giving me a space. And then I just realized that yes, there isn't a specific training because I was a middle-distance swimmer. So spring training was really hard for me. Like to sprint was just extremely hard and frustrating. But I told him like, I'm probably going to be really grumpy during those sessions, but I do understand that's the older that I get, the more power that I need. So I'm giving you permission to give me those trainings, but I just want you to understand that I'm going to be grumpy because this is too hard for me. And needless to say that this was the best season of my life. Just a simple conversation with a coach, something that I've never had. So it makes a lot of difference. - This also shows the difference between, you know, grassroots or community-based participation in sports and LEED participation. And because we do a lot of work within the community and in terms of increasing the participation of girls, women, persons with disability, pacific islanders of diverse sexual orientation and gender identity. And, you know, these things are a lot more common than not within this what for development programs. But then when you get to the LEED level, you don't see this having to see the economy being respected or promoted in that way. I think that is also a difference that we have to talk about because now a lot of the participation program creates a pathway to LEED participation. So it also becomes like a huge cultural shock for many, you know, athletes and players that then, you know, moved towards LEED participation when they come into such a more of a rigid-like structure. - Yeah, I mean, totally another aspect that I have never thought of, but since you mentioned the sports for development, I did want to ask you about that Rochika to say about what counters harm in sport and why sports for development can be so important. So I'd love to hear a bit more about what the evidence shows about what works in these programs. You know, we've read a lot that the program you're involved with, for instance, is making a really positive impact on players and on coaches, making them sort of proactive change agents, for gender equality, for ending violence. And I'd love to hear a bit more about that, the sports for development approach and the evidence around what works in that. - You know, more broadly, some of the evidence shows that, you know, the sport for development program has to be well designed and it has to be intentional and it needs to include that people is going to work with and for, that's really important. It has to be co-designed and I don't mean consult it. I mean, co-designed. - Co-designed, yeah. - Well, you know, in the region, we hear so much of consultations, consultations and it's over hyped and it really doesn't do justice to effective development work. And the other thing is that, you know, sport for development programs is a long-term investment. A lot of the time people think, you know, a six-month year program is a sport for development program. It may be an advocacy-based program that is looking at, you know, a development issue but it's not necessarily a sport for development, you know, program. So that's another thing that we found from our experience that there has to be intentionally designed, co-designed, has to be saved, it needs to include safeguarding measures right from the beginning. It cannot come, you know, afterthought, it has to be there right from the beginning and it has to be long-term investment into this kind of progress, and I'll tell you, you know, an example. In one of our reunion programs, you know, what happens is, you know, they go into the schools, they train the teachers over, you know, a few months, would then become trained at skill to deliver a spot for development program, looking at gender equality and leadership in primary schools. So this training was delivered to, you know, it's delivered to teachers in different places, but mostly in peri urban and rural or outer island areas, so more isolated areas than urban areas. So then this teaches went through a series of training and one particular teacher then went back to her village, you know, for some break quality, etc. And then she noticed that there were two children that were become by the family members, they were being beaten and neglected, and because of the training that she had received through this one for development program, where she was working with children in the school in delivering, you know, a program on gender equality and leadership through using rugby. She was able to use that same knowledge and skills to intervene safely and to get the children to safety and to get the relevant authorities involved so the children can be safe. So this is some of the ways that sport for development program that ripples out into the whole social echo system, you know, it's within the relationships you have with people around you, then goes into the community that you are part of, and then also affects policy. Because then through this process, then there was realization that the government of the state policy was inadequate to address child protection issues, not only within sport, but also a little bit outside sport. So then advocacy started happening around this and now we've had legislations that have been reviewed, and there's a lot more discussions about, you know, national action plan to prevent violence against women and girls on incorporating safeguarding and using sports, you know, to look at prevention of violence in sports, because gender based violence also manifest in sports. So there are different ways that the sport for development program, you know, can function and work and there's different kinds of impact that you can see it at an individual level right to policy level. So Joanna, through the sports and rights alliance, you have worked with athletes, you've worked with researchers with international organizations to document abuse again, like talking about how does this abuse really look because I think most of us really do not understand it and also advocate for reform. How has evidence from athletes helped to shift the conversation so that people stop thinking of it as isolated cases and do actually recognize abuse as a systemic issue, what have you seen. When I started sharing my story back then, I realized that storytelling can be as powerful too for mobilization, and in my case, it was the right timing to talk about status of limitations, because I was 21 and a status of limitation in Brazil was at 18. So some politician says this is wrong, look at that case, she has that dedicated her life to swim in, she cannot have access to justice. So that's when we started a campaign that led to the Joanna Maria law that lift the status of limitations in Brazil, so a harm in sports that helped people and children in the country in any, in any place. So that was fantastic win in the timely use of storytelling, but I think storytelling has a time limit like people turn their attention elsewhere because there are other things happening and also because it's really hard to to read those stories over and over again. So that's when I realized and that's why I wanted to measure the extent of violence in Brazil and then hammer on the importance of collecting robust data, not just in Brazil but around the world. Today, they are, I would say a substantial number of prevalent studies measuring violence in sport in grassroots sports and in elite sports, but they are, and I think a support to point out, they are a project of individual researchers who kind of like thought like I did, like this is important to measure, this is not a result of sports bodies understanding that it's easier to tackle what we measure, so it's individual researchers doing the work, it's not a policy, it's not mandatory. So looking ahead, looking into the future, I think that doing prevalence and incident studies is really important also to see if those numbers are going down and then see if what we are implementing is actually effective. We also need to hold spaces for those stories because there is like, there should be always space for storytelling because storytelling sometimes can be a form of remedy when justice is not there because of status of limitations and so on, that's when storytelling and other forms of remedy needs to be offered to people with lived experience and then for us as advocates, I think it's important to have both and work with both to understand what's going to work best depending on the audience. Like if I'm going to speak with sports governing bodies, I can share some storytelling, but I do think that data can be more compelling. So from an advocacy perspective, I think that ethical storytelling has the power to push sports bodies to work, but then when that's combined with numbers with prevalence numbers that really help us to make sure that they do something, they can simply deny when we have percentages and then stories stick together. They work at different places, right, like research takes longer storytelling, you need to be quick to know how to do it, but when you're able to combine those to try to move the puzzles in a sector that is so comfortable regulating itself with so much autonomy, I think that science can play a big role here. And I think it's such a key point that you need the data to show people, you know, and to explain to policymakers and sporting bodies that no matter how much you try, you cannot dismiss this as a one-off case or a really bad culture or a few people who had a terrible experience in their life, this is systemic, this is drawn out, this does happen over time to many people and we need to see why and all of that. I completely agree with you, there's immense power in ethical storytelling and survivor-centred storytelling, but it does need the rigorous data along with it. And I think another key point there is also what you said about how many times can you tell those stories, you know, it's not from the point of view of other people hearing them, but from the point of view of the survivor having to go through that again and again and again. And I've been in conversations with survivors where they said, if I know that this is going to make a difference, it's one thing, but I don't want to be rolled out to tell my story just so that people can nod their heads gravely and not do anything. So, Roshika, looking at what, again, we're looking at the sports and development, team up is working across many different sporting contexts. How do you balance international safeguarding standards with local cultures and realities? And I think it also resonates what Joanna said earlier about, like, you can't just be like, well, in my sport, this is how it works and in that sport, this is how it works. But actually need to look at some of the universal human rights work and creating guidelines that can actually be common across sports, what have you faced in that? One of the things for us in relation to our work in the region is that whilst we don't really have data around the rates of violence in sport, but we do have prevalence data of violence in our communities. So, for instance, in the region, we have one of the highest rates of violence against women and girls. In intimate relationships, it's as high as 70% in some countries in the region. Four in five children have faced violence discipline at home or in schools. So, given these kinds of statistics and, you know, the small communities that, you know, make up the Pacific Island countries. The chances of people, you know, who are the perpetrators or who are survivors of victims, being in walling sports is very high. And many times, you know, they're there in sports, they may not talk about it, they may not shake, they may not be known the perpetrators, but it is present in sports. And that's one thing that we do try to talk about and it really helps us in terms of our implementation approaches. So, in terms of the international standards around safeguarding, that's non-negotiable. There's some standards that are non-negotiable. So, for instance, you know, trauma-informed approach, survivor-centered approach, do no harm approach. So, these things that, you know, we talk about it, we talk about it, you know, we contextualize it to our own cultures and our own countries here in the region. But then, the way we implement it, I think that's where we have maintained a lot of flexibility, the kind of conversations that we have afraid and that how it gets implemented. And that's where the cultural nuances and realities have been able to be, you know, embedded. The other thing that I also wanted to draw on, I think that, you know, given the way that also the specific cultures are very diverse, you know, here are some cultures that are, you know, very non-confrontational, very submissive, the some cultures who may not be. So, we also try to find some common grounds around community care, empathy, a more communal sort of collective-based approaches that care towards each other. And we found that those kind of things have really worked for us in terms of bringing the international standards and repackaging it into something that is more relatable, more contextualized, and then implementing it, holding to the different dynamics that are present within our own context. And it would also differ from the country to country in the same region. Another thing that we've been conscious of, maybe just one quick example to draw on these, we've just recently, I've launched a same guiding at major sporting events. events toolkit, it's kind like a toolkit in relation to safeguarding in spots and it took us, we started this process in 2023 and the FIFA Women's World Cup when it was held here in Australia where we had a group of people, islanders who were safeguarding champions who went to the FIFA Women's World Cup in Australia and provided safeguarding support which was also the first time that FIFA incorporated safeguarding in a major spot tournament. That's incredible. Congratulations. Yeah and then we had similar people and more, expanding the centre more people involved in some of the regional tournaments at safeguarding champions, employing a similar model and through the experiences that this many safeguarding champions gained over the years, so sort of a, you know, learned by doing approach, we used that to create the content of the toolkit. So it took us three years to do that and then we tested each component of the toolkit and asked the safeguarding champions across the region and we also made sure we included the feminist and women's rights organizations who provide our service in this conversation. That was really important for us because most of the sports organizations in our region are majorly volunteer around, don't have an office but, you know, there may still be, you know, quite popular but they still will struggle with resources and institution, governance and so on. So for us to involve the women's rights and families organizations who provide services was really important to ensure that, you know, the response to disclosure and stuff is done in a way that is, you know, doing not for the harm and is incorporating a survivor's centre approach. So yeah, so for us, adaptability, flexibility that my doing, this all has been really key in terms of bringing the international standards to our communities and to our different cultures in the region. Just to pivot a bit to survivor leadership and I know we've already started talking about this, but Joanna, so we hear from survivors that often reporting abuse is actually, or can be as harmful as the actual abuse occurring if institutions respond badly. So what do you think a truly survivor-centered response looks like? Because we talk about survivor-centered response all the time in a trauma-informed response. What does that look like? That question I can't help but speak about the Indian wrestler's case because it's just so recent. So just to summarize, we're talking about the most decorated wrestlers in India who have been content-warning abused by the president of the Wrestling Federation for decades, including children. Some of those girls decided to speak up. So we're talking here about Olympic medalist world championship medalist. So we're talking about people who are at the elite of the elite level and we're still harmed throughout the years by this demand that is very powerful and very close to the government. They decide to disclose. Victims start to be retaliated. Some of them take off their complaints. They take the streets. Male allies showed up, so male wrestlers supporting these athletes. They are beaten by the police. The government doesn't do anything. The sports decide to take him off his position, but the whole culture is still there. When all of the eyes are on those Indian wrestlers, they did something but not really justice and didn't sanction him. When we turned our eyes just yesterday, he was acquitted. And I'm talking here again about the most decorated athletes. So even those with the sports power or they reach the highest level of sport with evidence with a lot of victims don't have access to justice. Now you can imagine what happens at the grassroots level or if you don't have the platform that those Indians had. So I would say that a truly survivor center responses the opposite of that. We know that when people are speaking about it, it's like we're leaving it through it again. Sometimes it's even worse as time as we grow older because we understand the severity of what has happened. Like today is a little bit harder to me to speak about it than it was when it happened because I didn't understand. I just noticed this is extremely painful and uncomfortable to me, but I don't have the words to put to what this meant to me. So I think that understanding that the impact of trauma, taking measures that starts from this, from the understanding on the impact of trauma is the place to start. So prioritizing the wellbeing of those involved, including the elite perpetrator because when the process is correct, the chances of getting to a shank to a sanction are higher, asking the right questions, ensuring agency because when you are views, power and agency is taken from you. So I think the response needs to be we need to do everything that we can to make sure that the victim has some power and control over what's happening. So there are so many ways to do this with kindness. I have volunteered for an ethical council in sport and I have witnessed first hand how the process runs smoothly when everything is rooted in psychological safety. Not just what you ask, but how you ask. Debrief with the ethical counselors afterwards because there's just sometimes this is so heavy. Getting feedback from people involved to see what we can do to make the process better. Reviewing your policy based on the learnings of the cases that you're dealing with. So there's just so much that we can do, but unfortunately I know in other sectors as well, but in the sports sector, the response feelers just almost absent, I would say. Yeah, with the survivor-centered approach, I think one of the things from our experience has been a lot of the times, you know, sports organizations, you know, if they appoint a safeguarding focal point, they may not necessarily have all the skills or have received enough training to even provide the kind of approach in dealing with the safeguarding issue. So we have been really conscious also about the capacity that sports organizations have in different parts of the world. Some may have more capacity, some may have a sole safeguarding officer that whose role is just around safeguarding and then receive the required support and training. So for us, again, it goes back to working with women's rights service providers, working very closely with them, having them part of the referral mechanisms and pathways which everyone in the organization should be familiar with and using that to ensure that, you know, you're not posing harm as you are dealing with the survivor and then one simple thing that we encourage like case management committees or investigation committees is to get the survivor involved in the kind of decisions you are making around different processes as much as possible, have the survivor engaged in those processes, ask them for their opinion, include their views in the process, you know, as much as they want to be involved and always have the sort of constant feedback. So sometimes it's very little things that can make a huge difference in giving someone autonomy and control over their lives, especially in the incident has just happened or the trauma is still quite raw. So ask these things like small little steps that sports organizations do. There's some organizations, you know, they do it much more better, but in relation to sports organizations, you know, especially in the global south and in regions like the Pacific, it is a little bit difficult for them to incorporate like a full survivor of victim-centered approach or even a trauma-informed approach. So I'm really grateful for a lot of IIMS international federations that are now having trauma-informed coaching, which is part of same-guardic work, but it's obviously not, it has not become as mainstream as it should. Institutions of sporting organizations are beginning to talk about it, so there's beginning to be at least some steps that are being put in place, some awareness, some information, so like where hopefully we are slowly heading in that direction. Joanna, you've consistently argued that athletes should have a seat at the decision-making table. Why do you say that survivor and athlete leadership is so essential if sport is really serious about preventing abuse rather than just responding to abuse? The short answer is that I do believe that there are gaps that you can only grasp if you live through it. In the same way that there are some discussions that I have with friends who are lawyers where I can't really see all the legal aspects, lawyers without lived experience can't understand how some of their process have an impact on us. So if sports bodies, if they want to create policies and procedures that mean something and mean something to the most affected, and in this case, even though anyone can be impacted by violence and sports, when we look at the pyramid athletes are the most vulnerable, and then when we apply an intersection approach, we're talking about athletes from the global south, we're talking about marginalized communities, we're talking about black athletes, the LGBTI community, people with disability. So what is the hesitance to include them? What is the hesitance to include those who are harmed? If the chances, if the outcome can be something that is actually more legitimate, that will decrease the chances of a crisis of reputation risk. So to me, personally, it's a win-win for everyone. It's much better for you to liaise a process to create a policy, to improve your case management system, to have remedy and assistance in place that might take longer because you're going to co-create this with impact stakeholders that can actually create traction, can have some discussions, but that can eventually lead to better results. So I can't understand that the hesitance and the closed doors. The more we open these spaces, and also when we talk about survivor engagement, it can't be tokenistic, it can't just be Joanna sitting at the table because there are some experiences that I cannot grasp. I don't know what is it like to be an LGBTI person impacted by sexual violence in the context of sport. So I always say, say that my representation has limitations, which is why we created the athletes network for safer sports. So we can have a collective voice. And in the end, what we want and what is needed is we need mandatory safeguarding documents from the highest level of sports governing bodies. At the moment, it's still optional if they will have a policy, if they will not have a policy, if we will have a reporting system, if they will not have a reporting system. We do have mandatory documents for doping. We do have for match fixing. We have some stuff for corruption. We don't have anything related to safeguarding. We have guidelines, we have tokens, but those are not mandatory. And given the extent of the issue, we cannot settle for guidelines. That does not serve us. Johanna, you started touching on some of the changes that are most urgently needed. And we know that sport doesn't stop when the game ends. There's a lot of harm, harassment, abuse and exploitation that's actually occurring online as well. So what changes do you think are most urgently needed to actually make the digital space safer for everyone in sport? And Rashika, can I start with you on that? I think first and foremost, we need to start treating online harm as a safeguarding issue. I think that's the first thing that we need to start doing. The other thing is, and this is like my pet peeve, we should stop placing the responsibility on athletes, on people that are being halved online. There's a lot more focus now on digital literacy with athletes, women referees or women coaches who are more vulnerable to online harm. And too often, like this conversation, are just focusing on a very protectionist approach and again, the responsibility falls on the victim or the survivors. And we're not placing responsibility on the sports organizations and on tech companies and policy makers to do more. We need to stop with the narrative on placing the full responsibility on athletes and survivors and victim on changing their own digital behavior to prevent the news when it could be as just simple as having a public fan account. And I think we need to focus more. The conversation needs to shift to policy makers. It needs to shift to sports organizations and it needs to shift to tech platforms. And especially to tech platforms, where the safety tools may not be so easy to find and use, are where they're all filtering and moderation and monitoring tools online failed to protect people from harm and they get aware with so much, they learn so much abusive content beyond lying, you know, they're slowing response. There's many times that a lot of violent sexual harm online does not get picked up. And the other thing is with our policy makers and this is where I think there's a lot of this joint where people may not be, people may be working in isolation and they're not working together with sports organizations to find that kind of interconnected. So policy makers may work in isolation in three online harm only workers with university students. They may not realize that the sports communities are also being affected. So the policies they make, the lowest they make around online safety does not include the nuance or the specific context of sports. So that's the other thing we need to rob our policy makers into the sports, the sports ecosystem, and help this discussion as a whole. 100%. I mean, I work very strongly on the tech facilitated gender-based violence space within SVRI and this is the first conversation I'm having specifically about online harm towards sportic personalities or athletes or like in the context of sports. You have lots of work being done around publicly visible people, journalists, activists, young people, people across all sorts of, but yeah, the sporting thing is, it's definitely not a conversation we're having nearly enough. Joanna, do you want to add anything to that? And also, if I can ask you to also just quickly address this question of, what do you think gets in the way of turning the evidence that we do have now? Because we do have much more evidence than we did before into action. Absolutely. I think those two questions are somehow related and I'll say the IOC and FIFA at Megasport and events, they have created this online system where they can keep an eye on everyone who is accredited to the event. So athletes go to anyone that is accredited to the event. If something spikes online hate, they're able to contact Interpol and the platforms and then take this content down. So they do have, once again, a reactive system doing games time. We think it is, this is extremely important, but it doesn't solve the issue. We're not changing the culture that the humanizes people. We can see, we can see some studies there have pointed that different things can spike online hate. Like in my personal case, I've been to the police twice and it has always led to my performance or accusing me of making up the whole story of this actual abuse to excuse my poor performances. We can also see that racism is something that really spikes online hate against athletes, but they are always related to the sport performance. So sport again has a responsibility to it. And to your second question, I think we need to move from the nice to have to that you must have. Back in the 2000s, when there was like some doping scandals, sport quickly came up and created what we call the water cold, which is the code that we all need to comply to be eligible to compete. And then UNESCO also created the anti-doping convention to where governments and member states need to comply. So we have the sports system and we have governments working together to keep sports clean. We have a criticism to the lack of people centered approach to these codes, but when it comes to harassment and abuse, we need to get to that level where sports body do not have an option to. And I have to point out that the International Olympic Committee until one year and a half ago, they were working on what they called International Safe Sport Framework, there was supposed to be added to the Olympic charter, therefore become mandatory. But now with the new presidency, unfortunately, they want to downgrade this document to the guidelines. And it simply do not serve us, this needs to be mandatory. And then look at the government, our organization is working closely with the UNESCO, building global standards for equitable and safe sports. And to make sure that this is survivor centered, we conducted a consultation with 136 people with lived experience, looking at the policy, looking at the utility, the relevance, the level of trust, and the gaps. And a lot of what was told by different survivors is already put into the document that is under review and is going to be enforced next year. So it's a huge goal of the sport and rights alliance and the athletes network to have mandatory safe guarding documents. I wanted to quickly take an appointment with John in terms of the apps that sports organizations made put in place for accredited officials or athletes to filter content. These apps also don't take you to account, a lot of people who language still may be English, but the nuances, the cultural nuances are different, mainly people from the global south. To say, for example, something like, oh, go back to the kitchen and make me a sandwich, globally known as a very sexist and misogynist remark. But something like in our region that gets used as a rape threat is take her to the Kasava patch, which basically means take her and rape her, and that gets used a lot. And many times this doesn't get picked up by filtering content. It just looks like, yeah, it's normal. So there's a lot of this, it's like they're like, we're gendered threats are very nuanced to different regions. And these tools that they create are very general. So not only are they reactive, but they do a lot of the countries of communities and organizations injustice because it just doesn't work. Absolutely. Because it doesn't have the linguistic or cultural nuances. And I think some of the really great organizations on the ground all over the world are actually trying to create those lexicans for, you know, that actually expand how experiences are described or record that specifically for cultures and communities so that that is actually recognizable. And it's a really good point. I just want to ask you each one last question. And I'll stick with you, Joanna, for now, after your experiences, everything that the life you've experienced as an athlete, as a survivor, as an advocate, what gives you hope? Is there something that still gives you hope that sport can change? That is the hardest question you've made, but I think I'm going to say that to me is the silent revolution that comes from the interaction with survivors. And that's something that I can't put in paper. I can't put it on social media. It's just something that we feel when we connect one another. And through the athlete's network, I've been blessed to connect with more than 250 survivors across more than 40 countries. And this is what gives me hope, particularly in a time where safeguarding is suffering a lot of backlash from the International Olympic Committee and FIFA especially. So I just have to stick to my peers and believe that another world is possible. And Roshika, for you, what keeps you motivated and what gives you confidence that future generations of athletes will have a safer experience of sport? You know, it's the people that are speaking out. I have seen change happen. I've witnessed it through the sport for development program that team up runs. I've seen it in the other work that I have been involved, you know, when male allies speak out and stand in solidarity. When girls and women speak out, when organizations and the staff keep on resisting patriarchy and continue speaking out, every time someone speaks out, for means demonstrating that the culture of shame, silence, and submission is shattering and it's breaking. And that actually really motivates me and gives me hope that there things will change. It is changing and it will continue changing. Maybe it needs to change. I need to bring more faster, I'd like to see it in my lifetime. But I think that if we continue, you know, assisting and assisting, it will change. A huge thank you to our guest Joanna and Roshika. I'm Aisha Margo and you've been listening to the Sexual Violence Research Podcast by the SVRI. Please subscribe so you don't miss what's coming and if you have a moment, leave a review. It helps us grow the community around this work. Thanks for listening and see you next time. [MUSIC]