The world of sports has been riddled with sexual abuse and harassment of young athletes by their powerful and publicly respected coaches (respected for producing performance results) for many decades, across all sports, regardless of sex. While there is no consistently collected data on the prevalence of these transgressions, there is reason to believe that news reports and limited data from national sport governing bodies represent the proverbial “tip of the iceberg”.
As is true about the origins of many not-for-profit organizations, Safe4Athletes was born out of the personal experience of its founder, Katherine Starr. Having being an elite athlete who endured sexual abuse during the course of her career with no resources available to help her, she simply wanted to do something to ensure that athletes following in her footsteps did not have to repeat her experience. In her own words…READ HER STORY
Safe4Athletes has created a video to learn more about adopting the Safe4Athletes program at your club or school.
The video will also give you a brief overview of abuse in sports. We encourage everyone to take a few minutes
and learn about abusive behaviour in sports and what
you can do to protect your sports environment as an athlete or a parent.
For more information on how to adopt a Safe4Athletes program visit 4-clubs
For more information for athletes information can be found at 4-athletes
Click here to View the Video
While it is virtually impossible to define every behavior that might be classified as abusive, it is helpful to review definitions and examples of commonly encountered misconduct.