Thousands of young people have been sexually abused by coaches, team doctors, and athletic department personnel in recent years - and those crimes have been covered up by fellow coaches, athletic department personnel, and school administrators. In a number of cases, known offenders were allowed to move to different schools or positions.
In Iowa, a 39-year-old coach and teacher was charged in August with third degree sexual abuse and two counts of sexual exploitation in connection with a juvenile female.
In New York in July, a gymnastics coach was indicted for allegedly abusing at least seven girls under age 13 who were students at his gyms.
In May, a lawsuit was filed in federal court accusing an Olympic taekwondo gold medalist and his brother and coach were accused of sexually assaulting female athletes, including minors, for years.
In May, a high school soccer coach in Ohio was indicted by a grand jury on multiple sexual assault and abuse charges in connection with a girl who was younger that 16.
In Baltimore in April 2018, a high school coach and elementary school teacher’s aide was charged with engaging in a sexual relationship with a 16-year-old female student.
In April, a water polo coach from Southern California was charged with the sexual abuse of seven of his female players, four of whom were 15 or younger.
In February in New Jersey, basketball coach and recreation director Christopher Tarver pleaded guilty to multiple charges in connection the sexual abuse of young men, and was sentenced to 52 years in prison.
In February, reports surfaced that hundreds of swimmers involved with USA Swimming were sexually abused by a number of coaches, with others in the organization accused of helping to cover up the abuse.
In major cases a few years earlier, in 2016 California wrestling coach Thomas Joseph Snider was found guilty on 39 charges in a sex abuse case involving more than two dozen underage boys.
In 2016, USA Gymnastics was hit with charges of hundreds of athletes being sexually abused by coaches and others, including Dr. Larry Nassar, who alone was accused of molesting 250 young women and one young man, and was convicted in 2017 and sentenced to decades in prison. Meanwhile, the organization was accused of hiding the crimes, and moving around abusing coaches.
And, of course, there was the 2012 conviction of Jerry Sandusky of Penn State on 45 counts of sex abuse involving 10 boys.
There are many more cases that we know of. It's likely there are many more that have not surfaced yet. Imagine if we went back over the last 50 years; there would likely be tens of thousands of victims.
And, again, that abuse has been covered up by fellow coaches, athletic department personnel, and school administrators. Abusers have been moved around and protected.
Coaches are people who are supposed to be trusted. The young people trusted them to make them better athletes. Parents rusted their children to those coaches.
We will not know the full extent of the problem until thorough investigations are done. How about grand jury investigations of every athletic department in schools and every athletic program in the nation?
Until such investigations are done, maybe people should consider not attending games, not buying sports apparel, not donating to sports programs or the Olympics. Hit them in the pocketbook - that will make them pay attention.
And if people want sports, they can play it themselves. Play pickup games. Engage in such activities as hiking, running, biking, swimming.
It may not be as polished, but it will still be good for them, right?
After all, if people believe they can be "spiritual, not religious," they can be "physical, not athletic."
---------------------------------------------------------------
Of course, none of that will happen - certainly not in the way that is currently happening with the Catholic Church
And that is despite the fact that in recent years young people are more likely to be sexually abused by coaches and others involved with athletic departments than they are by Catholic priests.
Let that sink in: Young people statistically are safer with Catholic priests than they are with coaches.
There are many possible reasons why people are not staging protests of sporting event, threatening boycotts, filling the social media with debates and lamentations, and getting covered endlessly on news outlet after news outlet.
One possible reason is that the Catholic Church is a single institution, while sports programs are all separate entities. They are sort of like all the different Protestant denominations and churches (oh, and by the way, ministers in many of those denominations and churches are statistically
more likely to be guilty of sexual offenses than are priests, even though those ministers can marry). It's easier to focus on one target than it is on thousands.
Many of those who are upset with what's happened in the Catholic Church are emotionally invested in that Church, either because they are active participants in the Church, or were raised in that Church. When it comes to sports programs, we might be invested in one team or one school, but not programs in general. I may care what happens in connections with the Syracuse University basketball team, but not with what happens with Michigan State's football team. As a result, the feelings are diffused when abuse is revealed in sports.
On a practical level, the Catholic Church is, again, one entity, and it is one that keeps records. Thus while there are thousands of individual churches, there are a limited number of dioceses where records are kept. That is not the case with sports programs in schools and with independent sports programs. We are talking about thousands of individual entities, some of which are quite small, and many of which do not keep detailed records. It would be a logistical nightmare to investigate them all. But, people could still boycott - look at what's happening with the NFL, for example. Money is indeed getting that league to start paying attention.
And let's also be honest: The Catholic Church is a target. There are plenty of people who hate the Church, and plenty of former Catholics who love to criticize it. There are a lot of such people in political and media circles and in activist groups. The devil is happy to make use of them all to help attack the Church. Meanwhile, sports does not face such extensive animus.
Given the situation with the Church, with coaches, with ministers, with teachers, etc. what we really need is not an attack on one group, but rather an honest look at what in our culture and society allow and even encourages this.
An honest look.
At ourselves.
We live in an over-sexualized culture, one that encourages sexual activity of every sort. Sex has been cheapened, often separated from relationships (even though this is a denial of basic human nature). This sexuality is on constant display in movies, television shows, literature, advertising, and more
There are consequences.
For example, we just had a report come out that a new record was set last in the number of people with sexually transmitted diseases. That's the forth year in a row that we've set new records.
The co-habitation and child-out-of-wedlock numbers keep going up.
All methods of birth control fail - there's really no such thing as "safe sex" (itself a deceptive concept) - and so this leads among other things to abortion.
There are more and more single-parent homes - homes that tend to suffer from greater poverty, and that tend to produce children whose understanding of self and family are distorted, and who will often repeat the patterns they've learned.
And those abusing coaches, priests, ministers, teachers and so on are reflective of all that.
Maybe we're calling for boycotting and refusing financial support for the wrong things.
Pax et bonum
