Child Abuse in Children`s Sports

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Child Abuse in Children`s Sports
By Blake W. Burleson

[Dr. Blake Burleson teaches in the Department of Religion at Baylor University.]

Elite Child Athletes and Regulation
The Trickle-Down Effect
Forms of Abuse
Child Sexual Abuse in Sports
Some Rules of Thumb for Parents
Protect your child`s time.
Protect your child against adults who do not put your child`s development first.
Protect your child against your own tendencies of achievement by proxy.

Elite Child Athletes and Regulation

It seems almost un-American to attach the world "abuse" to sports. In a day when many American children eat too much junk food, watch too much TV, and don`t exercise enough, sports serve as an important tool of childhood physical, social and moral development . Both of our children, ages ten and thirteen, are involved in competitive sports on a near year-round basis. Sports organizations exist, however, outside of the legal and moral frameworks which operate in other spheres of public life. The result of this moral isolation, which evolved for historical reasons based on the supposed "purity" of sports, is that many abuses involving children in sports go undetected or unchallenged.

In October 1998, a seventeen-year-old gymnast Dominique Moceanu, a 1996 Olympic gold medalist, ran away from her Houston home. Her lawyer filed suit in a Texas district court asking for a divorce from her parents. This lawsuit was later settled out of court with an agreement that gave Dominique the independence she sought. Dominique shares at least one thing in common with other children who are world class athletes: she is the primary breadwinner for her family. Dominique`s trust fund, previously controlled and apparently squandered by her parents, was worth millions.[i]

The potential for the abuse of child performers in the sports industry is not new. The most blatant abuses of this century have come from the former Soviet-bloc countries and from present-day China. The paralysis of Chinese gymnast Sang Lan in July of 1998 brought world attention to the plight of the elite child athlete. The seventeen-year-old gymnast botched a landing in a practice vault in the Goodwill Games in New York and will never walk again. Interviews with her parents afterwards revealed that they had only seen their daughter three times in the last six years. At age eleven, Sang Lan had been picked for the national team training in Beijing, seven hundred and forty miles away from her parents` home. Her father upon re-evaluation said, "How can we ever make it up to her? She was separated from her mother and father at such a young age, with no parental love."[ii]

The exploitation of children in high stakes performance sports is predictable. Historically, wherever adults have benefited from the performance of children, there have been those who have taken advantage of this situation. The passage of laws in this country related to child labor, which included the entertainment industry in the 1950s, serves as reminder that children need protection from not only unscrupulous individuals but also from industries which, sometimes unwittingly, allowed for systemic abuse. No doubt many supervisors who managed fourteen-year-old children workers in mines or factories, were model citizens. No doubt many of the movie directors who rehearsed eight-year-old actors and actresses for eight or more hours a day were moral people. It was not so much the adults but the system which needed changing. In due time it was.

Jay Coakley, sociology professor at the University of Colorado-Colorado Springs, makes the ironic observation that "child labor la2ws were initially passed in this country to free children of the control of adults concerned with things other than the growth and development of young people: we developed a set of laws designed to give children free time. That opened up the door for them to play sports and now, sports have become so work-like that we need laws to protect children from adults who have taken control over children`s `free` time…"[iii] The national governing bodies of professional and high performance sports are increasingly passing legislation to regulate the activities of their child athletes. For example, following the problems of pro tennis player Jennifer Capriati who was arrested for shoplifting, the Women`s Tennis Association and the International Tennis Federation raised the age at which a player could compete in professional tournaments. In 1990 the National Collegiate Athletics Association set a limit of twenty hours per week of practice time of student-athletes. The International Gymnastics Federation raised the minimum age for senior competition from fourteen to fifteen for the Atlanta Olympics and then to sixteen following those games. Some national government bodies have understood that the problem is not a few immoral coaches but rather the system itself.

The Trickle-Down Effect

While the potential for the abuse of children is greater in the high performance sports with their visible awards of money and prestige, children face abuse at other levels of sport as well. Children and youth sports have changed in recent years to such an extent that more regulation and oversight is justifiable. Coakley observes the following changes:

1. "There are many adults now whose livelihoods, careers and reputations depend on the performances of child athletes associated with their camps, academies, schools or training programs."[iv] A few years ago the only adults who earned their income this way were middle school and high school coaches who also had major teaching responsibilities. Inter-varsity scholastic athletics, however, is highly regulated with numerous checks and balances, such as Texas` "No Pass-No Play" rules. Today with the proliferation of sports leagues outside of the schools individuals can now make a living as coaches or organizers of leagues. For example, in many major metropolitans the coaches of select soccer or baseball leagues for children are paid. Parents of ten-year-olds will sometimes pay a fee of more than $1,000 per season to these select sports clubs. Individuals, who coach two or three of these select teams may earn enough money so that they do not have to have another job. Organizations that offer professional, expert coaching at the youth levels are found in many sports including gymnastics, track and field, basketball, soccer, football, boxing, golf, tennis, and hockey. When the performance of children determines how successful an adult is viewed in his or her career, the potential for abuse is heightened.

2. Some parents are quitting jobs or working only part-time in order to manage their child`s athletic career.[v] Coakley points out that "when [this] occurs, it puts a whole lot of pressure on a 13-year-old" since "the livelihood of the family now depends on that athlete`s performance-and not just the performance in a particular event, but the commitment to the sport for the next 10-5years!"[vi]

3. Children are making "uninformed choices about their sport participation and sport lives."[vii] I have heard parents of child athletes, some as young as seven, say that it is their child`s decision to practice and compete at an intense and highly competitive level. "This is what she wants to do; its her decision." While it would obviously be wrong to make a child compete in any sport against her will, it does not follow that it is right to allow a child to practice and compete at an elite level just because the child indicates a desire to do so. Should children be allowed to make decisions to dedicate themselves in an exclusive way to any particular endeavor? Should a child be allowed to make a commitment for the next ten years of his or her life? A child who is allowed to set the maximum limit of participation in a sport is subject to misuse by a sport which is continually hyped up by the media, parents, friends, and coaches. Coakley asks, "Is it the job of [adults] to help kids set limits and to raise questions about these uninformed decisions they have made?"[viii]

4. Finally, the corporate sponsorship of sports has proliferated at all levels, including those for children. Coakley writes, "Whenever I see coaches and corporations getting together to deal with things that affect the lives of children, I always wonder about what the outcome will be and whether it will reflect the interests and needs of those children or of the corporations."[ix]

Forms of Abuse

These changes in the children`s sports scene have increased the likelihood for abuse to occur. The most typical forms of abuse are: overtraining (the frequency and intensity of preparation) and overscheduling (the frequency of competitive performance). These abuses lead to physical and emotional problems for child athletes.

In the 1980s physicians became alarmed at the increase in overtraining injuries being reported. Since young athletes` bodies are still growing, they are more vulnerable to repetitive motions in activities such as pitching, catching, kicking, jumping, etc. Until recent times, children did not receive overuse injuries. Dr. Lyle J. Micheli, president of the American College of Sports Medicine, reported, "A stress fracture, which is well-known in adults, was unheard of in children. Now we see a lot of them. Overuse injuries is a new story for kids. It`s a problem."[x] Since the mid-1990s issues related to female child athletes have surfaced. The term "female-athlete triad" was coined to refer to the problems of disordered eating, menstrual dysfunction, and osteoporosis. Dr. Ian Tofler, Department of Psychiatry at Louisiana State University, writes, "In the general population, the prevalence of eating disorders is about 1 percent. …Among female athletes…the prevalence…is reported to be between 14 percent and 62 percent."[xi] Overtraining may place inappropriate physical demands on children which may have long-term health consequences.

It is becoming clear that overscheduling is not only a problem for child athletes but for children in general. University of Michigan`s Institute for Social Research published the 1997 time diaries of 3,586 children nationwide, ages twelve and under. "Involvement in sports…rose almost 40% from 1981 to 1997: boys now spend an average of four hours a week playing sports; girls log half that time."[xii] Children`s leisure time dropped from forty percent of the day in 1981 to twenty five percent in 1997.[xiii]

While sport is a form of play, the seriousness with which it is played at certain levels, makes it more like work. The fact is that today many children`s sports leagues are not leisure activities. The over scheduling of competitive games may lead to burn out or to certain stress-related psychological or physiological disorders.

Child Sexual Abuse in Sports

Another concern which has surfaced is the issue of sexual abuse and harassment in the coach-athlete relationship. Two cases have gained some national attention in recent years. In 1995, an ethics and eligibility committee of USA Volleyball heard testimony from three former players of Rick Butler, a USA Volleyball juniors coach who owns the prestigious Sports Performance Volleyball club in Chicago. The committee concluded that Butler had had sex with the three players, two when they were sixteen and one when she was seventeen. In publishing their decision, the committee said, "The act by a coach of having sexual intercourse with a junior volleyball player entrusted to his care constitutes such immorality, lack of judgment, and unacceptable behavior as to cause the United States Volleyball Association, at minimum, public embarrassment and ridicule by its merely having taking place."[xiv] In 1998, two former soccer players at the University of North Carolina filed suit against their coach Anson Dorrance for sexual harassment. Dorrance is considered one of the greatest NCAA coaches of all time. His women`s soccer teams won fifteen national championships in the first nineteen years of the program`s existence. The players allege that the coach made "uninvited sexual advances" and "inappropriate and uninvited physical contact."[xv]

How prevalent is sexual abuse in children`s sports? Statistics on child sexual abuse are difficult to come by because of the sensitivities involved. What should be obvious, however, is that there is the potential for sexual abuse in the sporting arena due to the structurally dependent status of the athletes. Sociologist Celia Brackenridge points out several things to consider. The first concerns the power differential between the coach and the athlete. Brackenridge writes "sport coaches have available all the sources of personal power identified in French and Raven`s classic taxonomy viz.: reward power, coercive power, legitimate power, expert power, and charismatic or referent power."[xvi] Second, "the development of gender consciousness has come late, if at all, to most women`s voluntary sport organizations which have styled themselves on pre-existing organizational structures for men and whose central identity has been as sport organizations for women rather than women`s organizations for sport."[xvii] Because of this fact, little attention has been given to issues of sex abuse, and especially child sexual abuse, by coaches. Abuses have been ignored in the push toward developing successful women`s programs. Third, coaches, by the nature of the relationship, are given power over the bodies of their athletes. Obviously, much of this relates to training and performance. Yet this can and does extend beyond the immediate sporting environment. The coach, in many instances, instructs the girl what clothes to wear (to practice, to performance, on road trips, to school, etc.), what and when to eat, how much to weigh, when to go to bed, etc. The p0oint is that coaches have power, often in subtle ways over their athlete`s personal lives. Thus, the numerous structural dependencies of the child athlete within sports` organizations contribute to the potential for child sexual abuse.

Some Rules of Thumb for Parents

As the adult protectors of children, parents have at least three obligations regarding their child`s participation in sport.

First, protect your child`s time.

Abraham Joshua Heschel writes:

Technical civilization is man`s conquest of space. It is a triumph achieved by sacrificing an essential ingredient of existence, namely, time. In technical civilization, we expend time to gain space. To enhance our power in the world of space is our main objective. Yet to have more does not mean to be more. The power we attain in the world of space terminates abruptly at the borderline of time. But time is the heart of existence.[xviii]

Children in America today, affected by the same time crunch as their parents, are made to "sacrifice time" in order to achieve something, to make something of themselves. Their goals are to be accepted into a college of their choice, make first chair in the band, start on the football team, be elected class secretary. Not only is this high speed chase to "enhance our power in the world of space" unhealthy physically and emotionally, it is also unhealthy spiritually. Heschel reminds us that the biblical commandment to honor the Sabbath is a commitment to time over space, a commitment to being rather than becoming. Should Christian parents expect their children to grow spiritually when their time is never guarded or made sacred? Children know what their parents consider the priority by how they are allowed to schedule their time. Does basketball practice always take precedence over youth Bible study? Is the child allowed to quit a sport in order to have more free time? Is the child allowed to be late for Sunday School but not late for baseball practice? Is rest and quietude only a means to an end, as in getting ready for the big game? It m ay be helpful for Christian parents to question themselves occasionally regarding their child`s schedule. Without daily and weekly Sabbaths, children like adults cannot grow spiritually.

Second, protect your child against adults who do not put your child`s development first.

Children and youth sports leagues are not always organized in ways that indicate that the organizers understand children`s developmental needs. Organizational rules are often designed to insure fair competition between teams and have little to do with the protection of the child from abusive situations. Some youth leagues even use professional sports models for their own. This is inappropriate. Organizational rules should also protect the rights of children.

Further, like in any profession, there are good coaches and bad coaches. Coaches, as teachers of children, should be held to moral standards. It is the responsibility of parents to know how the coach treats their children. Parents should especially be aware of coaches who only measure their success according to the won-loss record. An anonymous author once wrote: "One hundred years from now, it will not matter what my bank account was, the sort of house I lived in, or the kind of car I drove…But that the world may be different because I was important in the life of a child." This is the kind of attitude parents should expect of their children`s coaches.

Third, protect your child against your own tendencies of achievement by proxy.

Let`s face it. Parents have an innate tendency to live through their children and to take personal pride in their achievements. Parents who were once athletes and now have children who are athletes, tend to have large emotional investments in how their sons or daughters perform athletically. While parents support and encouragement is important for any childhood endeavor, there is a limit to how much should be invest ed. The following are symptoms that indicate a parent may have invested too much in the child`s performance: (1) You become angry or depressed over your child`s performance. Remember, it is hard enough for your child to deal with his or her own dejection over poor play much less your emotional baggage. (2) You never miss your child`s game for any reason. Missing your child`s game occasionally can let the child know that sports is not everything. (3) You continually compare how your child is doing to how you did at the same stage of your athletic career. The child senses that the family honor is now at stake in the athletic performance. (4) You have planned and envisioned your child`s athletic career several years down the road. The child now feels pressure to live up to your possibly inflated expectations.

Parents should remember that the most important role they play for their children who are athletes is not that of a fan or coach or manager but that of father or mother. A parent who becomes the child`s best fan, or expert and demanding coach, or highly organized and proficient sports manager may lose the most important and treasured position of all-that of father or mother. After all, what does it profit a man if he gain an athlete, and lose his own son or daughter?

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[i] Jodie Morse, "Vaulting into Discord," Time, 2 November 1998,80.

[ii] John Leicester, "Gymnast`s parents filled with grief," Waco Tribune-Herald, 25 January 1998, p. 1C.

[iii] Jay Coakley, "Ethics in coaching: child development or child abuse?" Coaching Volleyball (December/January 1994): 19.

[iv] Ibid., 19-20.

[v] Ibid., 20.

[vi] Ibid.

[vii] Ibid.

[viii] Ibid., 21.

[ix] Ibid.

[x] quoted in Diana Lundin`s, "Overtraining Child Athletes," Waco Tribune-Herald, 17 September 1989, p. 12A.

[xi] Ian Tofler, "Physical and Emotional Problems of Elite Female Gymnasts," New England Journal of Medicine 336, no. 2 (1997): 281.

[xii] Nayda Labi, "Burning Out at Nine?" Time, 23 November 1998, 86.

[xiii] Ibid.

[xiv] Don Patterson, "Under Fire: Three former players have accused highly-successful juniors coach Rick Butler of having sex with them while they were minors," Volleyball, April 1996, 26.

[xv] S.L. Price, "Anson Dorrance: The legendary soccer coach says he knows what makes female athletes tick. Now some of them are suing him," Sports Illustrated, 7 December 1998, 91.

[xvi] Celia H. Brackenridge, "Fair Play or Fair Game? Child Sexual Abuse in Sport Organizations," International Review of Sociology of Sport 29 (1994): 292.

[xvii] Ibid., 289.

[xviii] Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Sabbath: Its Meaning for Modern Man (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1951), 3.