In a neatly maintained archive of papers held in the library at Brunel University, the pioneering campaigner for action to prevent sexual abuse in sport Prof Celia Brackenridge compiled a catalogue of horrific cases that came to court in the 1990s. Included in the files is a note on the Channel 4 Dispatches programme that in 1997 exposed several instances of abuse in football.
Tragically the Brackenridge archive comprises reports of convictions for serious and sustained sexual abuse across many sports at a time, so recent, when there was no dedicated child protection safeguarding, nor even basic checking of coaches for criminal records, as British sports have in place today. Some abusers who were finally convicted, usually after victims came forward years later as adults, had committed crimes for decades. Convictions in football included Jim Torbett of the Celtic boys club where Alan Brazil, later a Scotland international and now a radio presenter, was one of the victims and witnesses. There were cases of abuse, reported here and in Canada, the US, Australia and Germany, in athletics, gymnastics, sailing, karate, squash, diving and – most notoriously at the time – swimming.
It was the 1995 conviction and 17-year prison sentence for offences including rape and indecent assault handed down to Paul Hickson, who had been coach to the GB swimming team at the 1984 and 1988 Olympics, which generated most media coverage and finally prompted sports to make child protection a priority. It is shocking now, after the harrowing experiences recalled by former footballers in recent weeks, with the Metropolitan police becoming the 22nd force to launch an investigation into historical allegations, to look back at how little was in place. The lawyer Malcolm Johnson of the firm BL Claims, a specialist in abuse cases, explains that sport was not included in child welfare laws that applied to local authority education and care settings, and says of the decades up to reforms of the late 1990s: “In short, anyone could have unrestricted access to young people in intimate settings; systems to identify potential abusers were rudimentary.”
In that vast sporting landscape, which was in hindsight terrifyingly open to abusers, the FA’s own inquiry, led by Clive Sheldon QC, will examine how the FA itself, and professional and amateur football clubs who owed the primary duty of care to their young players, behaved and responded to concerns. Given that Chelsea required a confidentiality clause to prevent their former player Gary Johnson from talking about the abuse he suffered, as part of the £50,000 settlement agreed only last year, it seems highly probable that the authorities will be found to have been deficient. The lament of the former Charlton Athletic player Russell Davy, that he did not receive even an acknowledgment from the FA of a letter he wrote to its Lancaster Gate HQ, addressed “to whom it may concern”, warning about the abuser Eddie Heath, grimly replicates the FA’s inaction over letters from supporters in the 1980s warning of crushing at Hillsborough. This was a governing body that hosted an FA Cup semi-final in 1989, after prior crushes and warnings, at which 96 people were killed.
Brackenridge, who is seriously ill with leukaemia, has written extensively about a culture of ignorance, denial, ridicule of complainants, “minimisation and obfuscation” which too often characterised the response to allegations of sexual abuse from sporting authorities who believed they were providing a virtuous service to society. Yet over recent weeks, as the former players have come forward, historical abusers and scandals have been serially exposed and the victims’ suffering heard as never before, Brackenridge has found herself frustrated that the scale of progress since the 1990s has not been sufficiently acknowledged.
“In the 1990s awareness of child protection needs was low, political will was lacking and expertise related to sport was virtually zero, but it was not just football; these cases will be found in every sport,” Brackenridge told the Guardian. “In 2001 the NSPCC formed the Child Protection in Sport Unit (CPSU), and excellent work has been done, although we can never say the problem has been eradicated. I am definitely not an apologist for the FA but I would argue that for the child protection work they do now, they are the leading sports governing body in the world.”
Even the experience in 2003, when her review of the early years of the FA’s child protection work was stopped because of cuts at the organisation, was not the failure it has been painted, she says. In her book, Spoilsports, she said there had been “demonstrable improvement in the impact of child protection in the game” and that two years from the end of the research project, child protection was growing, 53,000 people had been Criminal Record Bureau-checked and more than 140,000 attended child protection training.
The foundation of the CPSU, which developed mandatory safeguarding structures for all the UK’s main sports, was a reaction to the scandals and convictions of the 1990s. After Hickson’s conviction in January 1996, the governing bodies of swimming, diving, athletics and gymnastics met at the then Sports Council, since renamed Sport England, with the NSPCC and the National Coaching Foundation (NCF), to discuss the need for regulatory child protection in sport.
Sue Ravenlaw, who worked for the NCF, moved to the FA in 2000 to work on implementing child protection procedures and is now head of equality and safeguarding at the organisation, which is responsible overall for millions of people who play football. The Premier and Football Leagues have their own safeguarding policies and procedures for their academies and centres of excellence, working to similar agreed standards developed at the same time.
In response to the revelations by so many former footballers at all levels of the game alleging historical abuse, the FA said last week that 99% of its 7,814 grassroots clubs, covering 62,238 teams, had responded to a deadline to renew their safeguarding policies and commitment. Those that had failed to do so, which did not mean they were failing to abide by their policies, were nevertheless suspended from football until they comply.
Ravenlaw says that Tony Pickerin, the former head of the FA’s national school at Lilleshall, became “alarmed” in the 1990s at the criminal cases of abuse being exposed in the courts and initiated the development of proper procedures. Pickerin was made head of child protection and equity at the FA largely because as a teacher and head of the school, he had experience of legally required safeguarding.
“People realised that sport was providing massive access to children with no safeguarding structure in place,” Ravenlaw explained. “Everybody was shocked and realised this abusive behaviour had to be addressed.”
While the media can fairly be accused of largely under-reporting the stream of cases including those raised by Dispatches, and not campaigning coherently for child protection in sport until a few weeks ago, in fact governing bodies, the NSPCC and Sport England did respond to the 1990s scandals and for 15 years have been radically improving their approach. The CPSU, formed after a taskforce led by the NSPCC and Sport England, requires all sports that qualify for grant funding to adhere to national child protection standards. Brackenridge says that this “financial lever” was, perhaps sadly, “a major turning point in securing compliance”.
One of the most gaping flaws in the legal framework previously, that criminal record checks were not widely available except for schools and other local-authority-run institutions, did not fully change until late 2003, when the FA had to apply for eligibility to run checks, Ravenlaw said. Brackenridge’s research team was given access to analyse 132 cases of investigations run by Pickerin’s department at Lilleshall between April 1999 and August 2002 and found that 16 involved people operating in youth football who had, or were alleged to have, a record of sex or violent offending. The cases included 14 of alleged sexual abuse, only 10.6% of the total; alleged physical, emotional abuse and bullying accounted for the largest proportion, almost 60% of cases. The research found that of the 132 cases 38 led to a criminal or social services investigation, with seven resulting in criminal convictions, while six led to dismissal from football.
Ravenlaw cautions against any idea that a criminal records check constitutes child protection, explaining that it is now a basic first requirement and safeguards only against people who have previously offended.
“If you understand child sexual offending and abuse of power, the number of people with a conviction is tiny compared to those who pose a risk of harm,” she explained. “The most important element for us is the education programme, building a culture about safeguarding, making football more child-centred, listening to children, being more aware of signs and indicators that might mean there is a problem.”
She points to the nationwide upgrading of youth football from the free-for-all that existed up to the 1990s; all FA-affiliated clubs are now required to have criminal records checks run on their coaches and adopt the recommended safeguarding policies. At charter standard clubs, in which 80% of youth football is now played, coaches have to be qualified to at least level one, which includes safeguarding and ongoing education. Every county FA has a designated safeguarding officer to be responsible for education and overseeing the implementation and working of child protection across a region.
The Premier League has been emphasising that it has embedded safeguarding in its academy structures, which take large numbers of children in for training from the age of seven, a system that followed the FA’s charter for quality report in 1997. Although concerns are regularly raised that the academy system professionalises football far too young and that the rejection rate and aftercare for young people from academies is unacceptable, in terms of child protection, the Premier League clubs have followed the CPSU standards for more than a decade. Clubs must employ a full-time head of safeguarding, an academy safeguarding officer and community safeguarding officer, and a board member must also be responsible. The Football League’s policies and practices are similar, including ongoing education and training.
“Training for clubs identifies that all disclosures of abuse or concerns about people who may pose a risk of harm to children must be referred to the appropriate statutory agencies and to the FA,” a Football League spokesman said. “Clubs have a responsibility to deal with low-level, poor-practice issues brought to their attention.”
The leagues and FA acknowledge this cannot mean they have excluded sexual or other abuse from a sport played by 1.8m people every week but they have, undeniably, overhauled child protection since 2001 and do take it very seriously. In 2011 the NSPCC ran a major survey of young people’s experience in sport which found that, although the majority found it a positive experience, 75% had suffered emotional abuse, 29% sexual harassment, 24% physical abuse and 3% sexual abuse. Brackenridge’s colleague at Brunel, Daniel Rhind, led a team that researched 652 safeguarding cases being run by 41 sports in 2011. It found that 134 of the cases, almost 21%, involved alleged physical abuse, while 124 cases, 19%, concerned accusations of sexual abuse, defined as “enticing or forcing a child to engage in sexual activity”. Almost half the cases concerned behaviour by people outside sport, which led Rhind to conclude that sport can be a healthy environment in which young people may confide in adults about issues they are confronting in their daily lives. Rhind did, though, highlight difficulties governing bodies have in pursuing cases, with some lacking the resources and expertise, and said there was “a significant training need”.
He and Brackenridge emphasise that the fact there are cases being pursued is an encouraging sign and they caution against sports believing they can eradicate abuse or abusers.
“When you put safeguarding in place, the number of cases goes up and I see that as reassuring,” Rhind said. “There are paedophiles in society, they are often very manipulative; they have to win the trust and almost groom the sport itself, the club, parents, before they can get to children. No system is perfect but the aim is to catch people early in the process and deal with it.”
Worldwide, Rhind said, the FA is seen as a leading sports governing body for child protection and the system put in place since the CPSU was formed in 2001 as a “gold standard” model other countries can follow. International standards for safeguarding in sport, developed for Unicef, largely follow this English model, Rhind said, for many countries in the world that still have nothing in place. That prompts the terrifying thought that the horrendous experiences of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s now being recalled by traumatised former footballers in England are being suffered by young people in sport right now, in many countries all over the world.
