By Simon Dobolosky
The kiss that blew up the soccer world when Spanish Football Association President, Luis Rubiales openly and blatantly abused Spain’s World Cup winning team’s Jennifer Hermoso screwing up their 2023 World Cup winning euphoria was one of diverse sexual abuse common place hapoennings tainting sports we hear of so regularly.
In Sri Lanka, where it is not an exception, the recent schoolboy abuse in a Colombo school rugby team blew the lid to the scandalous ugly side that sportsmen and women are subjected to live with suppressed by the abuse of power by tinpot officials. The sordid actors are said to be mainly coaching staff who man the show. Word has it of some athletes who have invariably fallen in line due to pressure.
The Spain women’s soccer scandal would go down as one of the major sexual abuses abusing authority.
But the final dust on the Rubiales scandal frowned at that the Spain Football Association President got off lightly with a penalty of $10,000 to be paid to the victim ordered by court on being convicted by court of sexual abuse, the judge, in disallowing the prosecution’s call for a jail term of one and a half years, holding that though the kissing offence was reproachable, was spontaneous and not of a violent nature.
Hermoso’s dismayed reaction to the verdict found all-round support by women in Spain.
DEVASTATING FOR GIRLS & WOMEN
An International Review for the Sociology of Sports has revealed that many women have, at some time, been the subject of sexual harassment or abuse in their working lives, and that similar experiences also occur in sport and why they have particularly devastating consequences for girls and women.
HARASSMENT FACTORS
Sexual harassment and abuse arise from the culture of sport and from the opportunities for exploitation of power and authority which this affords coaches. Results from studies of personal accounts of abuse by former women athletes have been presented and used to test various explanatory theories of abuse.