abuse in gymnastics Archives - GymPal https://gympal.org.uk/tag/abuse-in-gymnastics/ Gymnast Parent Alliance Sat, 04 Jul 2020 21:07:43 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.5.4 https://gympal.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/gyp-150x150.jpg abuse in gymnastics Archives - GymPal https://gympal.org.uk/tag/abuse-in-gymnastics/ 32 32 Gymnastics: Physical Abuse, Witnessing Abuse and the Futility of Complaining https://gympal.org.uk/2020/07/04/gymnastics-physical-abuse-witnessing-abuse-and-the-futility-of-complaining/ https://gympal.org.uk/2020/07/04/gymnastics-physical-abuse-witnessing-abuse-and-the-futility-of-complaining/#comments Sat, 04 Jul 2020 21:07:43 +0000 http://innermagic.co.uk/?p=73 We’ve been talking a lot about gymnastics the past few days and I asked one of my daughters what her worst gym […]

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We’ve been talking a lot about gymnastics the past few days and I asked one of my daughters what her worst gym memory was, wondering which of the awful things that I knew she’d endured she might choose. She surprised me though, and immediately picked something that happened not to her, but to her teammate. I say I was surprised but really, I shouldn’t have been. As we have listened to gymnasts and ex-gymnasts speak out recently, it is noticeable that they speak as often of what they saw happen to others as they do of their own suffering. This is a known phenomenon. In fact, in the safeguarding training that I have undertaken, we were taught that to allow a child to witness abuse is itself, abuse. This is because witnessing abuse is often just as traumatising as suffering the abuse directly, in some cases even more so.  

This is my daughter’s story. The name of the gymnast involved has been changed.

“We were training in the run up to a competition and so taking turns to watch each other. It was Sarah’s turn on beam and we all watched her perform her routine. She did a split change ring leap where you do a leap in splits, change legs in mid-air, then you bend your back leg up and arch your head back to meet it so that your foot and head touch. It is a very tricky move because you have to take your eyes off the beam and it is very difficult to spot the landing.

As Sarah came down to land, both her feet missed and slid down one side of the beam. Her body followed and landed heavily on the beam with the side of her ribs hitting the hardest. We later learned that she broke three of her ribs in that fall. We all knew it was bad, Sarah started to cry and she never cried, but the coaches didn’t move. Sarah knew, and we knew, that she had to continue or the coaches would be angry, but you could tell that she was scared and in a lot of pain. It was horrible not being able to comfort her, it was horrible watching her finish her routine in fear and pain and it was horrible knowing how we were all expected to do the same if we were hurt.”

A truly upsetting experience. However, as awful as this incident was, I know that the full story was even worse than my daughter’s recollection. Firstly, because I know that the real reason that Sarah fell that day was not the difficult move but because she was unwell and chronically overtired from so much training at the time of the accident. She shouldn’t have been training at all that day, but the pressure to train no matter what was so great she was afraid to not go to gym. The second reason is worse. Sarah was badly hurt, if doing her best to hide it, and even though her mother knew that it would annoy her coaches, she took Sarah to see a respected physiotherapist. When they returned to gym for the next session after the appointment, Sarah’s mum very nervously reported to the coaches that Sarah’s ribs were broken and that the physiotherapist had said she needed to rest. Sarah’s mum said she’d explained to the physiotherapist that this would be very difficult as they were under a lot of pressure to train for an upcoming competition and the physiotherapist finally, if reluctantly, agreed that Sarah could do very light, limited training. Sarah’s mum explained this to the coaches and detailed what the physiotherapist had said Sarah could, and could not do. It was a very awkward conversation. The coaches were, as usual in such circumstances, very annoyed and dismissed the physiotherapist’s restrictions as ridiculous and ignorant. Sarah’s mum became flustered at this point and said that perhaps she’d misunderstood the physiotherapist’s instructions and agreed that the head coach could contact the physiotherapist directly for confirmation.

As we all turned up for the next training, Sarah’s mum brought her in expecting a light session. However, a very buoyant coach announced that she had called and spoken to the physiotherapist who had, she said, cleared Sarah to return to full training! We were all very surprised, not least Sarah’s mum. But, she assumed that she must have misunderstood what the physiotherapist had said to her and so left an equally astonished Sarah to do a full-on, four hour training session. There was a competition imminent and a lot of work to do.

Now you may have guessed that something else is coming here, however we suspected nothing. Sarah continued to prepare for competition and competed although still in pain from her injury. Not long after however, Sarah’s mum confided in me. Concerned that Sarah was still experiencing some pain she had called to talk to the physiotherapist again for further advice. It was then that she learned that the physiotherapist, on speaking to the coach, had strongly advised against training and that the coach had outright lied. Sarah’s mum was distraught and conflicted. She knew that she should remove her daughter, but Sarah was desperate to continue in gymnastics and to stay with her friends. We discussed the various options, but she was frightened about the potential consequences of them all.

Conditions in the club worsened, and ultimately, I reported the incident, among others, to British Gymnastics. I provided the name of the athlete involved, the club, and the full contact details for her parents. In fact, as well as complaints regarding my own children, I detailed the abuse of several other children and provided their contact information too. I did so with the permission of all the parents. They all were desperate for something to happen and for children to be saved from further abuse but even those who had moved away were too frightened of the consequences to contact BG themselves. They told me, and I told BG, that they absolutely wanted to talk (in fact not doing so was tortuous) but they just wanted to be able to say to people who might accuse them of being troublemakers that they hadn’t initiated the conversation.

The result? They were never contacted. When I later asked BG why, I was told by the head of their Ethics & Welfare team that this would be considered “digging for dirt” (incidentally, other parents have reported this exact phrase said to them regarding separate complaints about other gyms). And in case you’re wondering, the coaches involved were neither suspended nor sanctioned.

As a final note. If you are struggling to know what to call what I and my daughter have described here, it is ‘physical abuse’. Even just the part about pressuring children, even if indirectly, to train when not fit to do so is considered physical abuse. In fact, the World Health Organisation takes this one step further and regards such practice as physical ‘violence’. It results in both immediate, potentially serious, injury but often also life-long chronic pain and physical impairment. As a relatively minor example, my other daughter, cannot straighten many of her fingers due to multiple hidden-by-her and thus not treated fractures. They are often painful, and we are told she will likely suffer early arthritis in them.

Such abuse has no place in sport.

Further note, these events, and the subsequent complaint, took place many years into the ongoing tenure of Jane Allen as CEO of British Gymnastics

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Coercive Control of Children in Gymnastics https://gympal.org.uk/2020/07/02/coercive-control-of-children-in-gymnastics/ https://gympal.org.uk/2020/07/02/coercive-control-of-children-in-gymnastics/#respond Thu, 02 Jul 2020 22:19:49 +0000 http://innermagic.co.uk/?p=53 Thanks to campaigning groups such as Women’s Aid, domestic abuse in the form of coercive control was made illegal in 2015. This […]

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Thanks to campaigning groups such as Women’s Aid, domestic abuse in the form of coercive control was made illegal in 2015. This legislation brought adult women, suffering in emotionally abusive relationships, greater recognition, protection and potentially the opportunity for redress. The campaign and subsequent legislation highlighted the fact that abuse needn’t be overtly physical in order to be extremely damaging.

For myself however, the most shocking aspect of hearing about coercive control was the stark similarities I saw between it and the culture of abuse and control that exists in so many gymnastics clubs. The main difference being that the gymnastics victims are, for the most part, children.

According to Women’s Aid, coercive control is:

“an act or a pattern of acts of assault, threats, humiliation and intimidation or other abuse that is used to harm, punish, or frighten their victim. This controlling behaviour is designed to make a person dependent by isolating them from support, exploiting them, depriving them of independence and regulating their everyday behaviour.”

“Coercive control creates invisible chains and a sense of fear that pervades all elements of a victim’s life. It works to limit their human rights by depriving them of their liberty and reducing their ability for action. Experts like Evan Stark liken coercive control to being taken hostage. As he says: “the victim becomes captive in an unreal world created by the abuser, entrapped in a world of confusion, contradiction and fear.””

To illustrate my point, here are some of the main features of a coercively controlled relationship (adapted from the Serious Crime Act 2015), and how they correspond to gymnastics control culture:

Isolating a person from their friends and family

Competitive gymnasts typically train double (or more) the number of hours recommended by experts (which, incidentally, is 1 hour per year of age). The result is that, from a very young age, children quickly become isolated from other friends and activities. They are also typically forbidden from going to birthday parties or other social events and from participating in other clubs or sports. The gym, the coach and the other children they train with literally become their world. The child may well spend more waking hours with their coach than their parents.

Taking control over aspects of everyday life, such as where they can go, who they can see

As above. From very young, say 6 or 7, young gymnasts’ lives will become dominated by gymnastics and the decisions of their coach. Holidays are discouraged and opportunities to develop in other ways foregone.

Monitoring Social Media

Although younger children may not have social media whatever their parents put out will be closely monitored and children may be punished for perceived misdemeanors. Once children have their own accounts they will be watched carefully. Often coaches will use the children to contact other children on behalf of the coach (coaches are not allowed to directly message under 16s).

Depriving them access to support services, such as specialist support or medical services

Gymnasts and their parents are often actively discouraged from seeking proper medical attention for injuries and pain. In fact, gymnasts are often too afraid to mention that they are in pain in case they are belittled and mocked. Many develop chronic, debilitating affects due to untreated gymnastics injury.

Repeatedly putting them down such as telling them they are worthless

This is the entirety of many gymnasts’ lives. The standard line is along the lines of “you are nothing without me”. All failure is blamed on the gymnast, all success credited to the coach. An example might also be something like taking competition medals away from a child saying they don’t deserve them.

Humiliating, degrading or dehumanising them

Gymnasts are frequently separated and isolated from their teammates as punishment. Failure to execute a skill is often punished by having to do arduous conditioning exercises, often they are mocked while doing so. They then, exhausted, have to attempt the skill again and if they fail are again punished, a vicious cycle that unsurprisingly often results in injury. Other punishments might include things like vacuuming the entire gym whilst being subjected to taunts and mocking. I have also seen gymnasts forced to sit apart from their teammates (as isolation punishment) as they do the rounds at a competition. This list could be endless.

Making threats or intimidating them

Many gymnasts feel under constant threat of either physical or emotional abuse. Threats may be direct, where they fear they’ll be hit, or indirect where they feel they’ll be forced to do something likely to result in pain or injury.

Assault

Sadly, gymnasts are assaulted by their coaches as documented by the Guardian newspaper in 2017. I even know of an incident where a BG coach, sent by Lilleshall to work with a GB squad gymnast, viciously pinched the gymnast’s leg to ‘correct’ an error on beam. This was a considerable disappointment to the child’s and other squad parents who had hoped the visiting coach would notice the abusive culture in the gym and put a stop to it.

Reputational damage

When a gymnast dares to be ill for example, they will often be mocked and critisised by the coach to their teammates and even to other parents. Children are afraid of being seen as “weak”, “lazy” or a “faker” and will attend gym. Coaches will often also ‘bad mouth’ their gymnast to other coaches and gymnasts at competition. Children are very afraid to be seen in bad light and will do what they can to conform to the group’s norms.

Stockholm Syndrome

The concept of coercive control also explains another phenomenon i.e. the question of why abused gymnasts often want to stay with their abusers and, topically, why one might hear different accounts of life in the same gym? As mentioned above, experts such as Evan Stark liken coercive control to being taken hostage. As he says: “the victim becomes captive in an unreal world created by the abuser, entrapped in a world of confusion, contradiction and fear.”

Many of us will have heard of Stockholm Syndrome, “a condition in which hostages develop a psychological alliance with their captors during captivity. Emotional bonds may be formed between captor and captives, during intimate time together, but these are generally considered irrational in light of the danger or risk endured by the victims.” A relatively recent and upsetting example might be that of Natascha Kampusch, kidnapped as a 10-year-old by Wolfgang Priklopil and held in a basement for eight years. She was reported to have cried when she heard her captor had died and subsequently lit a candle for him as he lay in the mortuary. This might go a long way to explaining why some gymnasts will claim everything was fine despite documented, objective evidence that it not.

Finally, I for one, am very thankful that women in abusive domestic relationships now have the full backing of the law and recognition of their real plight, I now just want to know when the same attention and protection will be given to the children and young adults being abused daily in the name of British gymnastics?

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