Top Athletes Are Victims To Sexual Abuse, Study Reveals

Sydney Morning Herald

Friday March 9, 2001

Jacquelin Magnay

Nearly a third of Australia's leading sportswomen and more than a fifth of the men have been sexually abused, a study of elite athletes has revealed.

But Australian Institute of Sport psychologist Ms Trisha Leahy, who interviewed potential Olympic athletes during 1998, said the most disturbing finding was that nearly half of the occurrences of abuse of these athletes occurred within the sport.

``These are very high achieving people and they look like they are doing fine, but if we scratch the surface we find this abuse," she said. Athletes became trapped in a cycle of emotional abuse and manipulation which was made worse because the sporting culture accepted a higher level of abusive behaviour.

``This makes it easier for the sexual perpetrators to operate," said Ms Leahy, who conduct her interviews on a promise to respect the athletes' anonymity.

Ms Leahy said the distress of the victims appeared to escalate in cases where someone within the sport knew or suspected something but did nothing about it.

The Federal Minister for Sport, Ms Kelly, said Ms Leahy's study required harassment in sport to be taken seriously.

Launching a Federal Government policy against harassment, Ms Kelly said yesterday the problem was growing. She highlighted sledging and taunting by Australia's cricketers as inappropriate behaviour and spoke of racial vilification of indigenous athletes.

She spoke of Valerie Kost, who said she ended her horse racing career at the age of 22 because she could not longer endure the repeated rape, sexual abuse and harassment by 19 men, youths and boys during her time in the racing industry.

Under the new policy, national sporting organisations will have to introduce a harassment-free policy, which is currently being trialled by four sports swimming, gymnastics, softball and surf lifesaving. These sports have officers specifically trained in identifying harassment and will train officials, coaches and athletes in dealing with it.

Controversy has dogged three of those sports in recent years. Former swim and triathlon coach Brett Sutton, swim coach Ian Lumsden and national men's softball coach Kevin Henderson were all convicted on sex offences.

Five years ago the Australian Institute of Sport gymnastics program was investigated and then cleared of accusations of physical abuse.

Elsewhere, Soviet gymnast and four time Olympic champion Olga Korbut has publicly claimed she was a sex slave to her coach.

In Britain, the former Olympic swimming coach Paul Hickson was convicted of 15 charges ranging from indecent assault to rape and jailed for 17 years. He had used his position to threaten the girls' swimming careers. Australian Sports Commission executive director Mr Mark Peters said he expected the new policy could bring to light cases that have been previously hidden.

``We need a culture change and we want sports to have an environment where any harassment allegations can be confidentially investigated."