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The journey to reporting child protection violations in sport: Stakeholder perspectives

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journal contribution
posted on 2023-03-07, 14:30 authored by Yetsa A. Tuakli-Wosornu, Sandi L. Kirby, Anne Tivas, Daniel RhindDaniel Rhind
Sport is a context within which human and children’s rights should be respected, promoted, and protected. Yet, research and high-profile cases demonstrate that this is not always the case. To understand the existence (or not) of reporting mechanisms for child protection violations in sport, as well as how existing reporting and response systems operate, the authors, with the support of the Centre for Sport and Human Rights, conducted research on current abuse disclosure and reporting pathways in sport. The purpose was two-fold: to describe global child protection systems and reporting mechanisms, and to identify major areas of stakeholder concern, in terms of effective case resolution, healing, and children’s experiences along reporting pathways in sport. Two sources of evidence were tapped. First, a rapid evidence assessment consisting of a literature review and an exploratory survey with 112 global stakeholders was conducted. Second, focus group interviews informed by the evidence assessment were held with nine athletes with lived experiences of abuse in youth sport and 13 global human and children’s rights experts primarily working outside of sport. Through this emergent research, a ‘pathway’ or ‘journey’ to incident reporting in sport was developed, summarized as 5 ‘Rs’: Readiness, Recognition, disclosure and Reporting, Response, and Remedy, which are similar but not identical to existing trauma frameworks. Each stage of the reporting journey appears to be influenced by a range of contextual, organizational, relational, and individual factors. All told, the disclosure of child protection violations in sport is a complex and dynamic process where myriad factors interact to influence outcomes, including healing. Key recommendations include: (a) establishing a global Safety Net Environment in sport practice with varying applications from region to region, (b) building bridges with specific partner organizations to enhance child protection and safeguarding work in sport and (c) bringing safeguarding to unregulated sporting environments.

Funding

Oak Foundation

History

School

  • Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences

Published in

Frontiers in Psychology

Volume

13

Publisher

Frontiers Media

Version

  • VoR (Version of Record)

Rights holder

© The Authors

Publisher statement

This is an Open Access Article. It is published by Frontiers Media under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence (CC BY). Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Acceptance date

2022-10-05

Publication date

2023-01-04

Copyright date

2023

eISSN

1664-1078

Language

  • en

Depositor

Dr Daniel Rhind. Deposit date: 7 March 2023

Article number

907247

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