There's hard­ly a day that goes by with­out me­dia re­port­ing claims of al­leged sex­u­al ha­rass­ment, sex­u­al mis­con­duct and abuse. Ap­par­ent­ly, it has come com­mon­place in our so­ci­ety and the en­vi­ron­ment of sports is not im­mune and is per­haps one of the most preva­lent places for such evil acts to take place.

Ac­cord­ing to IOC (2007), “sex­u­al ha­rass­ment and abuse hap­pen in all sports and all lev­els. Preva­lence ap­pears to be high­er in elite sport. Mem­bers of the ath­lete's en­tourage who are in po­si­tions of pow­er and au­thor­i­ty ap­pear to be the pri­ma­ry per­pe­tra­tors. Peer ath­letes have al­so been iden­ti­fied as per­pe­tra­tors. Males are more of­ten re­port­ed as per­pe­tra­tors than fe­males.”

A sport­ing cul­ture that is root­ed in win­ning at all costs ripens the en­vi­ron­ment for sex­u­al ha­rass­ment and abuse of ath­letes. Sex­u­al ha­rass­ment and abuse af­fect vic­tims phys­i­cal­ly and psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly. Some ath­lete's per­for­mance may de­cline which may re­sult in drop­ping out of the sport. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, oth­ers may suf­fer from anx­i­ety, de­pres­sion and sub­stance abuse (IOC, 2007).

Both male and fe­male ath­letes, of­fi­cials and ad­min­is­tra­tors may be vic­tims of sex­u­al ha­rass­ment and abuse. Where­as some vic­tims may speak out oth­ers may not re­veal their sor­did sit­u­a­tions due to shame and the fear of jeop­ar­diz­ing their ca­reers due to vic­tim­iza­tion and reprisal from the per­pe­tra­tors who op­er­ate from po­si­tions of pow­er.

There are a num­ber of 'fa­mous' cas­es of sex­u­al abuse that have rocked the sport­ing world. In 2017, for­mer USA gym­nas­tics doc­tor Lar­ry Nas­sar was jailed for 60 years for child pornog­ra­phy charges af­ter be­ing ac­cused of sex­u­al abuse by more than 100 girls. Amer­i­can swim­ming coach Andy King was sen­tenced to 40 years af­ter be­ing ac­cused of three decades of sex­u­al abuse. Penn State Uni­ver­si­ty as­sis­tant coach Jer­ry San­dusky was sen­tenced to 30-60 years af­ter he was con­vict­ed in 2012 of 45 counts of abuse re­lat­ing to 10 boys.

Sport­ing or­gan­i­sa­tions in T&T through the di­rec­tive of the Min­istry of Sport and Youth Af­fairs (MSYA) should heed the call from UN Women in im­ple­ment­ing sev­er­al mea­sures to pre­vent and ad­dress sex­u­al ha­rass­ment and abuse:

*De­vel­op poli­cies and pro­ce­dures for the pre­ven­tion of sex­u­al ha­rass­ment and abus­es;

*Pre­pare and im­ple­ment codes of ethics and con­duct for coach­es, whether they work with adults or chil­dren;

*Mon­i­tor the im­ple­men­ta­tion of these poli­cies and pro­ce­dures;

*Eval­u­ate the im­pact of these poli­cies in iden­ti­fy­ing and re­duc­ing sex­u­al ha­rass­ment and abuse;

*Pro­vide train­ing on how sex­u­al ha­rass­ment and sex­u­al re­la­tion­ships can neg­a­tive­ly in­flu­ence coach-ath­lete re­la­tion­ships;

*De­vel­op com­plaint pro­ce­dures that en­sure pri­va­cy;

*Pro­tect le­gal rights of ath­letes and coach­es, and pro­tect against re­tal­i­a­tion;

*Screen all ap­pli­cants for coach­ing staff and vol­un­teer po­si­tions;

*Fos­ter strong part­ner­ships with par­ents/care givers in the pre­ven­tion of sex­u­al ha­rass­ment and abuse;

*Pro­mote and sup­port re­search on these is­sues;

*Fos­ter a cli­mate of open dis­cus­sion about the is­sues of sex­u­al ha­rass­ment and abuse so that ath­letes with prob­lems feel con­fi­dent enough to speak out; and

*De­vel­op ath­lete au­ton­o­my wher­ev­er pos­si­ble in­clud­ing adopt­ing coach­ing styles which give op­ti­mum au­ton­o­my and re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to ath­letes.

The key to ad­dress­ing sex­u­al ha­rass­ment and abuse at all lev­els of sport is dis­clo­sure. One case of sex­u­al ha­rass­ment and abuse is too many! Vic­tims must be­lieve that the en­vi­ron­ment that they are op­er­at­ing in is sup­port­ive and will fa­cil­i­tate time­ly ac­tion against all per­pe­tra­tors re­gard­less of where they are placed in the pow­er struc­ture. Sport­ing ad­min­is­tra­tors have to take full re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for all per­sons (play­ers, of­fi­cials and ad­min­is­tra­tors) with­in its am­bit by en­sur­ing that they are aware of their pa­ra­me­ters of ex­pect­ed be­hav­iour and the con­se­quences for vi­o­la­tion.

"I don't feel it is nec­es­sary to know ex­act­ly what I am. The main in­ter­est in life and work is to be­come some­one else that you were not in the be­gin­ning." Michel Fou­cault.