Physical maltreatment of children in sport

The majority of sport researchers favour a definition of physical maltreatment that emphasises actual or implied potential physical harm to the athlete (also referred to as physical abuse) rather than the purely physical nature of the aggression.5 7 20 In addition to documenting events that are generally considered physical maltreatment (pushing, biting, shoving, choking, hitting or punching), some authors have incorporated events that do not involve any physical contact in their definition of physical maltreatment, such as the imposition of excessive and intensive supplemental training,5 7 13 18 20 the forced pursuit of training and competition despite the presence of an injury or exhaustion,7 21 imposing the consumption of doping products,20 maintaining a very uncomfortable position,5 isolation of an athlete in a confined space,5 encouraging an athlete to initiate fighting and/or to wound the opponent,6 21 or the imposition of severe diets to lose weight.20 22

We argue that such a broad definition of physical maltreatment contributes to a substantial risk of confusion in classifying physical maltreatment and psychological maltreatment as it is very difficult to determine the consequences of a gesture, whether it be physical or psychological. Instead, we define physical maltreatment based purely on the physical nature of the aggression towards athletes rather than the consequences of these actions. In this way, we avoid the risk of confusion as to the distinction between physical maltreatment and psychological maltreatment, and we adhere to common guidelines concerning physical abuse outside the sport context.15 17 The choice of this definition involves a new classification of physical maltreatment in sport, where it manifests itself in five different ways (table 1).

Sexual maltreatment of children in sport

The criteria for defining sexual maltreatment are not uniform within the scientific community. Some definitions only consider acts that involve physical contact between the abuser and the victim (eg, penetration, touching, caressing),12 while others also encompass sexually suggestive acts that do not involve physical contact with the victim (eg, voyeurism, exhibitionism).5 7 13 Recent definitions of sexual maltreatment are increasingly broad, including gestures with and without physical contact.7 13 Sexual harassment can even be considered by some definitions to be sexual maltreatment.5

One of the main conceptual frameworks used by researchers to study sexual abuse in sport is Brackenridge’s sexual exploitation continuum,4 where sexual abuse is defined as stages on a continuum. The stages range from sexual discrimination and sexual harassment, to sexual abuse as the ultimate stage. According to Brackenridge,4 sexual harassment is different from sexual abuse in that it constitutes unwanted attention that can take the form of verbal or written threats, sexual jokes, sexual comments or insinuations, sexual or homophobic graffiti, sexually intimidating remarks, suggestive comments, invitations, or innuendos. Sexual abuse is described as forced physical contact or sexual acts carried out under manipulation or coercion.

For the purpose of this paper, sexual maltreatment of children in sport includes any activity that involves engaging a child in sexual activity, and is in line with the definitions proposed by Butchart and colleagues15 and Mathews and Collin-Vézina.23 Seven categories of behaviours are defined, either involving or not involving physical contact (table 1). Unlike Stirling’s5 framework, any sexual harassment behaviour that is not aimed at involving a child in sexual activity (jokes, degrading comments about appearance and so on) was excluded from the framework. This framework is therefore consistent with a Canadian non-sport-related work on the issue17 as well as the work of Brackenridge,4 which differentiate sexual harassment from sexual abuse.

Psychological maltreatment of children in sport

The work we present here offers new insights into the manifestations of psychological maltreatment of children in sport (see table 1). Several manifestations—classified by the majority of authors in sport as physical maltreatment—are part of our conceptualisation of psychological maltreatment. This form of maltreatment includes acts that have a high risk of harming a child’s mental health, safety or development.17

We make important additions to Stirling’s framework.5 For example, threats of violence intended to terrorise a young athlete, isolate and restrict the movements of a young athlete, and behaviours that promote corruption, exploitation, and the adoption of destructive, antisocial or unhealthy behaviours in young athletes represent categories of behaviours included in the psychological maltreatment category.17 The actions of forcing or asking an athlete (1) to perform excessive training beyond a reasonable point of exhaustion, (2) to train while injured despite contradictory medical advice, (3) to perform movements that are too difficult for his or her abilities and have or could have a negative impact on health or safety, (4) to adopt a self-destructive eating behaviour in order to achieve an ideal weight for the sport, (5) to use doping products or to use doping methods, or (6) to act violently in a competitive situation have all been classified as manifestations of psychological maltreatment.

Neglect of children in sport

Neglect, which occurs when ‘[…] the family environment or the person who is responsible for the child does not meet their basic needs in relation to health, education, emotional development, nutrition, accommodation and safety’,15 was not included in recent studies documenting child maltreatment in sport.7 13 Stirling5 and Mountjoy and colleagues14 extended the blanket definition of maltreatment in sport to include neglect. Indeed coaches and guardians of child athletes often have supervisory responsibilities that are sometimes equivalent to those of children’s parents, to entrust not only the development of the child but their safety as well, especially during outdoor tournaments or training and competitions abroad. The work of Stirling5 offered an important reflection on the categorisation of negligence in sport. As Stirling5 describes, neglect can be (1) physical (eg, allowing the use of alcohol and drugs, abandonment, being left injured), (2) educational (eg, preventing athletes from going to school), (3) emotional (eg, disregard of an athlete’s psychological health) and (4) social (eg, isolating athletes from friends, parents or romantic partners).

In a recent meta-analysis on child neglect,24 authors report three subtypes of neglect—physical, emotional and educational—and we adopted this approach too (table 1). Our choice of manifestations of child neglect in sport inside these subtypes was based on the suggestion of manifestations from Trocmé et al 17 and Stirling’s work.5 Manifestations of social neglect proposed by Stirling5 were incorporated in the emotional neglect and psychological maltreatment categories. So these items were not dismissed. For example, manifestations such as chronic exclusion of an athlete or discouraging athletes from having friends were retained. They however have been classified in manifestations of psychological maltreatment, based on the work of Trocmé et al,17 essentially because they do not constitute an omission or the absence of something (see definition of neglect) but rather a behaviour/an action from someone (here psychological maltreatment).

We included in our emotional neglect section a category called ‘permissive attitude towards the anti-social or criminal behavior of a child athlete’ (table 1), including manifestations such as letting a child athlete endure violent acts from another athlete without intervening or letting a child athlete consume doping products without intervening. However, we did not classify these manifestations in a social neglect category because of our choice of classification (Trocmé et al 17 and Stoltenborgh et al 24). It should be noted that manifestations of physical neglect related to food, clothing, proper living conditions and hygiene are responsibilities that are part of the family context rather than the sporting context, so they were not considered in our proposition.