Mike Hartill

Edge Hill University · Department of Social Sciences

Through feminist research in the study of sport, the issue of child sexual abuse has been driven onto the agenda of sports organisations, resulting in considerable practical reform (Brackenridge, 20018. Brackenridge , C. H. 2001 . Spoilsports: understanding and preventing sexual exploitation in sport , London : Routledge . [CrossRef]View all refere...

While little attention has been paid to stories of boyhood sexual abuse in sport, in recent years autobiographical accounts from male "survivors" have emerged in relatively quick succession. This paper argues that this is a significant development for the sports community which requires further attention. More specifically, it argues that the use o...

When the sexual abuse of children is revealed, it is often found that other non-abusing adults were aware of the abuse or held suspicions which they did not act upon. During the past twenty years or so, the concealment of child sexual abuse (CSA) within organisations has emerged as a key challenge for child protection work. Recent events at Pennsyl...

The book is divided into two parts. Part One critically analyses current child protection and safeguarding policy and practice in sport across a range of countries, including the US, Canada, the UK, Australia, China and Germany, providing a global context for current policy and practice. This provides a starting point for critical international com...

Objective Interpersonal violence (IV) in sport is challenging to define, prevent and remedy due to its subjectivity and complexity. The 2024 International Olympic Committee Consensus on Interpersonal Violence and Safeguarding aimed to synthesise evidence on IV and safeguarding in sport, introduce a new conceptual model of IV in sport and offer more...

Results of a project into the prevalence of interpersonal violence (abuse) against children in sport in the UK.

Coker-Cranney et al. (2018) recently stressed the need for the development and validation of a questionnaire that assesses a young athlete’s level of conformity to sport ethic norms. The objective of this study was to develop and begin an initial factor validation of the Conformity to the Sport Ethic Scale (CSES), a scale assessing the conformity o...

This study sought to develop and validate a questionnaire about violence experienced by children in sport. A convenience sample of 1055 French-Canadian athletes between 14 and 17 years old was recruited to participate in an online study assessing their experiences of interpersonal violence in sport. The Violence Toward Athletes Questionnaire (VTAQ)...

A conference bringing together experts, policy-makers, practitioners, researchers/academics and victim support specialists to scale up actions to tackle sexual violence against women and children in sports.

The abuse of children in sport has received considerable attention in recent years not least in the UK, where high-profile disclosures of abuse by former sports professionals© have led to several independent inquiries and reviews. Subsequent public and media interest has focused on the potential scale of 10 child abuse in sport. This scrutiny has h...

The recent interest in child sexual abuse in sport by the British media is unprecedented. However, the first public comment on this issue occurred over 30 years ago, when the British feminist academic Celia Brackenridge addressed the UK national conference of sports coaches in 1986. Nevertheless, it was not until the late-1990s that the first child...

Invited keynote address at the National Organisation for the Treatment of Abusers (NOTA) annual conference, Cardiff, Wales.

Based on life-history interviews with male and female ‘survivors’ of child sexual abuse in sport, this text offers a deeper appreciation for the experiences of those who are sexually victimized within sports and school-sport settings. Drawing on a wide range of sources, it also provides a new theoretical framework through which child sexual abuse i...

Since revelations of child sexual abuse in English sport surfaced in the late 1990s, significant developments in legislation and policy have reshaped the governance and practice of sport, rendering sport in England a world leader in athlete welfare. This chapter highlights the background to these developments and discusses the strategies in place t...

The idiom ‘prevention is better than cure’ is never more apparent than when applied to the abuse and neglect of children. In recent decades, prevailing attitudes about child abuse have shifted, reflecting a turn to a more holistic approach to safeguarding and an increasing demand that organizations explicitly recognize children’s rights. This chapt...

Child protection in sport emerged at the start of the 21st century amidst headlines about coaches raping, sexually assaulting and abusing children. Against this backdrop, in 2001 the UK government established an independent agency, the English Child Protection in Sport Unit (CPSU), which introduced national child protection standards for sports org...

In her seminal work 'Spoilsports' Celia Brackenridge argued that a theory of sexual exploitation and abuse in sport was possible and necessary, but also set down some key challenges for researchers about the way in which it should be conceptualised. In particular, Brackenridge argued that it is not possible to arrive at anything like a comprehensiv...

Report available at: http://repository.edgehill.ac.uk/6070/1/Research_Report-Safeguarding_in_RL-libre.pdf

Following a high profile case of child sexual abuse in sport in 1996, the Netherlands Olympic Committee and the Netherlands Sports Confederation (NOC*NSF) established a telephone ‘helpline’ service on sexual harassment and abuse (SHA). In order to expand their understanding of this problem, NOC*NSF maintained written records of incidents reported t...

Research into the sexual abuse of children in sport has a relatively short history and it is only within the last decade that sports organisations have begun to take preventative measures against sexual violence and child sexual abuse. To date, empirical and theoretical work within sport studies has concentrated on the male perpetrator and female v...

Childhood sexual abuse (CSA) is now a significant issue for organized sports. Since its “discovery” thirty years ago, research on CSA has been guided mostly by the “maleperpetrator—female victim” paradigm; hence, the perspective of the sexually abused male in the sports context has rarely been considered. This article considers organized male-sport...

The national governing bodies of sport in the UK are now heavily involved in developing and delivering child protection policies. Research in this area is in its infancy. The impact that such policies have on sport and its participants is important to explore. This paper is based on the findings of the first phase of a research project which is eva...

State-funded national governing bodies of sports in the UK now have a mandate to produce, disseminate and embed child protection policies. This warrants an analysis of the impact of such policies, particularly in the context of reaching their target audience and having some early influence on the practice of sports clubs' members in their dealings...