April 21, 2022 • 20 mins
Content warning: This episode contains adult language and adult themes, including sexual coercion and emotional abuse. If you or anyone you know is facing these issues, help is available through RAINN, the nation's largest anti-sexual violence organization. Visit RAINN.org, or call their hotline: 800-656-HOPE.
As listeners heard in Part 6 of Payback, the women’s sports world has been shaken in recent years by repeated allegations of sexual and emotional misconduct by men in positions of power. In this extended interview, Dr. Tanya Prewitt-White, a sport psychologist and author of Examining and Mitigating Sexual Misconduct in Sport, speaks with Alex Andrejev and Kata Stevens about the complex dynamics in the coach-athlete relationship, how athletes today are redefining their roles as advocates, and how to foster the transformative dialogues necessary for equity and progress in sport and society.
New episodes coming each Tuesday, through May 17.
To continue supporting journalism like this, visit charlotteobserver.com/payback or newsobserver.com/payback .
Payback is hosted by Alex Andrejev. It's produced by Kata Stevens, Casey Toth, Julia Wall, and executive producer Davin Coburn. The executive producer for iHeartRadio is Sean Titone.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Long Shot is a production of McClatchy Studios and I
Heart Radio. A listener note this episode contains adult language
and adult themes, including sexual coercion and emotional abuse. I'm
alexandreav and this is a bonus feature for Payback. As
(00:21):
you heard in part six Late Now reporting for this podcast,
two former National Women's Soccer League players leveld allegations of
sexual coercion and emotional abuse against Jessica McDonald's longtime coach,
Paul Reiley. Those allegations first appeared in The Athletic in
a story by Meg Lenihan. At the time, Riley was
the head coach of the North Carolina Courage. But those
(00:42):
allegations were just the latest scandal involving leadership throughout the NWSL.
In fact, during my year of reporting for this podcast,
scandals involving sexual harassment, abuse, or misconduct on the part
of mail coaches made headlines across the sports world and
SoC It's the fifth VSL coach accused of misconduct this
(01:04):
year alone. In gymnastics. Charge has announced today range from
human trafficking to criminal sexual conduct and swimming grooming her
for a sexual relationship when she was just thirteen years
old and beyond. This is a systemic problem that doesn't
get addressed because the adults in the room don't stand up,
(01:25):
and that has to stop. In this episode, here from
an expert that producer Catta Stevens and I found particularly
informative on this topic. I am Dr Tanya Pruitt White.
I create space for primarily athletes, a lot of female athletes,
to heal from harm that we have collectively experienced within sport.
(01:46):
Dr White is a trained survivor, advocate, and scholar on
sexual misconduct prevention and sports psychology. She co authored the
book Examining and Mitigating Sexual Misconduct in Sport and what
I do is talk about hard topics that oftentimes are
dismissed within athletic departments and organizations. But emerged from this
conversation was a fuller picture of the complex psychological dynamics
(02:09):
and the coach athlete relationship, the ways those relationships can
go so wrong, and how athletes today are redefining their
roles as advocates. This conversation has been edited for length
and clarity. Hellsten, Hi, Dr White, It's so nice to
meet you. How are you? I'm well, how are you
(02:31):
both great. We really appreciate your time. I think even
just like kind of your background and title is a
good place to start, and what you've written about really
kind of overlaps a lot with allegations of misconduct that
we've seen in the end of us L. Can you
explain that a little bit more and how long you've
been doing this type of work? Yeah? Absolutely so. When
(02:52):
I was a professor in New York City, I received
a call from my father that my former coach being
accused of having a sexual relationship with a freshman high
school and I immediately knew it to be true. I
could feel it in my body. I would often say this,
(03:13):
and it was kind of downplayed a lot, that this
person should not be coaching girls in high school. I
felt inclined to reach out to this young girl. I
was not at this time trained as a survivor advocate,
being a woman in sport with a degree in sports psychology,
really wanting to empower female athletes. I was just attempting
(03:36):
to be, in my mind, a good human to tell
this young girl who was coached by my farmwer coach
that I deeply believed her within a community, that this
was a very contentious thing that was happening. Yeah, that, um,
I know for you, this is an extremely personal subject. Yeah.
So she was telling her stories and I started to
(03:57):
recognize everything that she was sharing. I learned from a
sixteen year old girl when I was thirty that gently
rubbing someone's wrist means I want to have sex with you,
and I was like, I knew in my body that
that had happened to me. I did not know at
the time that I had been groomed. It wasn't conscious
in my mind. And all of a sudden, after the conversation,
(04:20):
it was this realization that like this had been going
on for twenty some years, and so all of a sudden,
all of these memories and thoughts became very real for me,
and I knew then as adult that these behaviors and
things that had happened were not appropriate. I started recalling
(04:43):
him coming to my home. He came to the front
door and had a Lakers jacket, and he said, don't
tell anyone that I got it for you. You're gonna
be the best point guard from this town. All of
these memories, taking me raspberry picking alone, he regularly said
I love you, you know, and then started having conversations
with my parents, and my parents saying, you know, we
(05:04):
thought it was just a really special thing. You thought
you were such a special kid. And so he had
also groomed my parents can groom the community. So that's
really where my journey began. Shortly there. Later that summer,
I went through the survivor advocacy training with what is
now Resilience here in Chicago, and I've never looked back.
You know, those patterns when we talk about grooming or
(05:26):
coercion or some of these practices that coaches exhibit where
it really crosses the line. What are some of those
patterns that we see in behavior? Typically there's these three
areas generally that grooming occurs under the psychological, the physical,
and then the grooming of a community. So the psychological
will be things like finding out what the person likes,
(05:49):
starting to make you feel as though you're special, as
though you're unique, that they're spending one on one time
with you to make you better in your game. The
perpetrator is also starting to see how far they can go.
You know, is there going to be a parent, a guardian,
a friend, a boyfriend, a girlfriend, a partner that's going
to intervene from there. The physical could be things of
(06:13):
a hug, you know, the themes that you kind of
talk about their right I know in your book as well.
You know, trust seem to be this really key factor
of the coach athlete relationship if you want to perform
at your highest level. Right. So, and we normalize it
in sport. Think about when we're training in sport. A
lot of times it can be really ambiguous, like, oh, well,
(06:33):
I have to touch the athlete's body to help them
with their form, to teach somehow to box out, how
to swing a back correctly, a reposition and adjust in gymnastics,
it could be any sport. And so that becomes normalized
because is everyone a perpetrator who has to touch an
athlete's body or wants to hug an athlete after a
loss or a successful game. And no, but these are
(06:56):
part of like normalizing this physical touch that and transcends
to a hand on the knee, you know, arm over
the shoulder for a long time, holding hands on a
bus ride, you know, privately, those types of things, and
the athlete has been psychologically groomed to possibly normalize this,
(07:17):
to think this is what happens for when you have
a really great coach that cares for you. And then
also within the community, it's not uncommon a lot of
times for these perpetrators to be perceived as the nicest person.
Pitting the athlete against other people within their community. The
isolation is really key in the grooming process, So pitting
(07:38):
the athlete against their other teammates, pitting the athlete against
their partner or their parents, their fellow coaches as well.
You know, things like oh, yeah, that coaches really mean,
and I'm the nice coach, I'm the one who cares
about you. And so these are some of the things
that become normalized over time. And then it's a lot
(08:00):
of times too late when people are like, oh, this
is what happened. I mean, I wonder how what the
damage can be when that trust has then broken, and
you know, you start to have this realization of that
was actually totally inappropriate. What's the effect I guess on
recipients of that kind of behavior at the at the
hands of coaches disorientation. Right, the person who has made
(08:28):
you believe cared about you the most, right, had normalized
their behaviors and their abuse of power to you. As
a victim, or survivor, and then a lot of survivors
there's this disorientation of does the next coach really care
for me? Does my next intimate partner? What are their intentions?
(08:49):
And so with these violations of boundaries, it can be
confusing in terms of well, was I really agree to athlete?
You know, was I really going to be a champion?
Or was all of that just to create this intimate relationship?
And so there can be for for athletes, for survivors
(09:11):
and victims, this moment of what is truth and what
was the facade? And that's part of the work that
I do is our bodies know, our bodies keep the score,
and so right when a lot of times I'll say
if if it doesn't feel right in your body, trusted.
But we are so socialized, even in sport, we think
about like athletes, right, some of the things that we value,
(09:35):
play through pain, champions never quit, all these things. So
we teach people to disorient themselves, separate themselves from their
physical body, and that's part of the healing process for
for many survivors is beginning to trust themselves again and
that they are more also than what they endured or
(09:55):
what they experienced you're very focused on this type of work. Obviously,
by as you were kind of coming into the space
in this world in your research, did you feel like, Wow,
there's a lot more people than I thought that have
experienced something similar. Do you have any sense of how
prevalent some of these issues are full disclosure. The first
(10:16):
year that I began holding space for athletes, I was
blown away. I would do anonymous surveys after a session
and ask if they felt comfortable, you know, are you
a survivor yourself? And and it would be within an
athletic department, and not everyone shared their story in these spaces,
(10:37):
and not all of their survivorship happened within sport. I
would sit there after these sessions and I would really
have to take it in, you know, one out of
two in in some of these spaces was like, it
happens everywhere. Sexual misconduct is in every community, it's in
(10:59):
every organization, and it's in every family, maybe extended family,
and we are not talking about it collectively. And that
is part of the education that is necessary. We'll be
back after this when we talk about some of that
(11:23):
education of the term by standards I know was mentioned
a lot in your work too, So I wanna, I
guess explore that term a little bit more. What is
by standardism and then how does that play into how
we typically respond to these instances of sexual misconduct in
sport versus how we should be responding. Yeah, the nuance
(11:43):
is so important when we talk about by standardism. By
standardism is this phenomenon that people are persons feel something's off,
they recognize their acknowledge that there's harm being done, and
yet they do not intervene. And so it happens at
an institutional level, and it happens at an interpersonal level,
(12:06):
and bystanders do and don't intervene for a variety of reasons.
And so this is where like we have to hold
the nuance this person who is perpetrating, who is grooming,
they're also grooming a community, and there is risk in
being a bystander. Right. It could be social capital could
be like you know that you're gonna have to go
(12:27):
against the rest of your teammates and they may not
believe you, just as they may not believe the survivor. Right.
It could also be for an athletic trainer who witnesses something,
they could lose their job taking on harm yourself. Right,
these are the real things that are happening. So most
of the times we think we're gonna applaud you, there's
(12:48):
gonna be another constituency that is going to demonize you.
The more that we educate, then we can collectively be
with one another and normalize being a bystander, normalized not
doing harm to humans, not only in terms of sexual misconduct,
but all sorts of harm. Yeah. I think that's a
(13:08):
great point, and I think it kind of plays into
this repeated theme of like institutional failure in all these
instances we've seen lately, because ultimately, like the institutions are
made up of people that you know, need to take
action of some sort, either do or don't. So institutional failure,
I think one of the hardest things, and you you
(13:28):
named it. People make up organizations and institutions, and so
as people and people in power, it's first admitting that
the system, the processes they are serving the most powerful,
the most wealthy within the system, and so that has
to be interrupted. And so what is that play here.
(13:50):
It's money, it's capitalism, it's reputation. We need to have
more restorative conversations because we hear a lot of lip
service institutions. Oftentimes, well, all right, we'll bring in a speaker,
will do a sensitivity training, will will do a sexual
misconduct prevention you know, online training, and then we'll keep
(14:12):
things moving. The system wants to keep moving as is
because it's working for those in power. The accusations of
abuse were devastating, but not surprising. Was not indicted today
on several complaints of sexual assault. More than sixty women
have filed complaints so far. This comes about a year
(14:33):
after police investigation sparked by lawsuits by twenty two women.
Olympic gold medalist Alex Morgan noted the league was informed
of these allegations multiple times and refused multiple times to
investigate the allegations. We get into this victim blaming at
some level. Most of us have done it, and what
(14:54):
we don't really sit and recognize that only one out
of a thousand, statistically speaking, one out of a thousand
perpetrators ever go to jail or see prison time or
have a sentencing. One out of a thousand. So let's
sit with that reality and so believing survivors. Why would
a survivor want to come forward if they know that
(15:14):
the legal system isn't working for them. And so a
shift that I often will welcome and invite people into
is that if we know a survivor, we also know
a perpetrator. Believing survivors to me is believing that yes,
people experience this, but people are capable of harm. As
(15:37):
I work with athletic directors and coaches, oh, we just
have to focus on survivors and what creates a situation,
you know, and how do we support after the fact.
And there's not the same level of conversations as I
perceive them that are happening of like, oh, perpetrators are
here in this athletic department right now, right in this space,
(15:58):
and this feels in sound is really really wild for
a lot of people. We'll be back after this. In
your book, it says we should recognize when it comes
to sexual misconduct, if you have the potential to be
victims and perpetrators, you must live in this reality, face
(16:20):
it fullan and act as a community of by standards.
What does that really mean in action? I mean so
many things. Not every perpetrator goes into their abuse of
power with an athlete, or with a child or a
person with a long standard pattern of behavior, a coach
(16:42):
could be going in with good intentions and then things
can snowball, and so it's it's acknowledging that. So if
we think about situations where we could put ourselves in
that spot, then we can be like, okay, like I
need to be recognizing my own boundaries. I need to
recognize where I have power, where I do not have power,
(17:04):
and be taught this right. We do not innately think
about this on a daily basis. So so teaching people
to like really think about what abuse of power looks like.
I know that you do a lot of identity work.
Obviously there's it's a prevalent debate nationally right now about
books and schools and identity and how all of that
(17:26):
is acknowledged and can you talk a little bit about
that as well. Yeah, So I deeply believe our our
identities are are steeped in our socialization and and not
all right, and they're fluid, and we are socialized to
believe that they're fixed, right, And so I oftentimes will
name I think there's important things to name. I'm a
(17:49):
white cis gender, overly educated human being married to a
man raised Christian, right, all of the things provide privilege.
And so why this is also important, especially as we
related back to sexual misconduct, is that there is a
(18:09):
history where people who live in my identities, look like me,
are protected, are most likely to be believed. And this
is historical, this was by design, and we need to
sit with the reality that not all white men are perpetrators,
(18:30):
but historically, white men with wealth had sexual access to everybody,
white women, enslaved women, indigenous women, Latina women, Asian women.
Over history, across the world, white men perpetrate sexual harm
(18:51):
more than any other right, Like, that's like do we
just have to sit and breathe that in and who
is most protected? The white woman is most protected in
sci idea? And then who was least to be believed
time and time again, women of color, black women, and girls,
trans women. So why this matters to sport? Who's in
(19:11):
power and sport very white cis gender men. If we
want to talk about sexual less conduct, we also have
to talk about this. And so when I walk into spaces,
I have to absolutely share who I am, share my socialization.
Actually sometimes I need to step out of the way
(19:32):
because women like me, we've had the mic enough. We
need to hear what is really happening, and we have
to ask those who have been most harm how they
want us to make it right. We can't come and
say well, we're gonna do this, this, and this, when
those who have experienced the harm is saying, actually, what
I need to make things more right or better or
(19:54):
for my own healing is for this to happen. And
that's transformational and that takes a lot of courage to
Rea mad Gin. And until systems people have the fortitude
to reimagine, harm is going to continue to be done.
I'm Alexandrea. Payback is a production of The Charlotte Observer,
(20:14):
Raleigh News and Observer, McClatchy Studios, and I Heart Radio.
It's produced by Cotta Stevens, Casey Tough, Julia Wall, and
Davin Cockburn. The executive producer for iHeart Radio is Sean
ty Tone. For lots more on this story and to
support journalism like this, visit Charlotte Observer dot com slash
payback or News Observer dot com slash payback. And for
(20:37):
more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the I heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
Long Shot is a production of McClatchy Studios and I
Heart Radio. A listener note this episode contains adult language
and adult themes, including sexual coercion and emotional abuse. I'm
alexandreav and this is a bonus feature for Payback. As
(00:21):
you heard in part six Late Now reporting for this podcast,
two former National Women's Soccer League players leveld allegations of
sexual coercion and emotional abuse against Jessica McDonald's longtime coach,
Paul Reiley. Those allegations first appeared in The Athletic in
a story by Meg Lenihan. At the time, Riley was
the head coach of the North Carolina Courage. But those
(00:42):
allegations were just the latest scandal involving leadership throughout the NWSL.
In fact, during my year of reporting for this podcast,
scandals involving sexual harassment, abuse, or misconduct on the part
of mail coaches made headlines across the sports world and
SoC It's the fifth VSL coach accused of misconduct this
(01:04):
year alone. In gymnastics. Charge has announced today range from
human trafficking to criminal sexual conduct and swimming grooming her
for a sexual relationship when she was just thirteen years
old and beyond. This is a systemic problem that doesn't
get addressed because the adults in the room don't stand up,
(01:25):
and that has to stop. In this episode, here from
an expert that producer Catta Stevens and I found particularly
informative on this topic. I am Dr Tanya Pruitt White.
I create space for primarily athletes, a lot of female athletes,
to heal from harm that we have collectively experienced within sport.
(01:46):
Dr White is a trained survivor, advocate, and scholar on
sexual misconduct prevention and sports psychology. She co authored the
book Examining and Mitigating Sexual Misconduct in Sport and what
I do is talk about hard topics that oftentimes are
dismissed within athletic departments and organizations. But emerged from this
conversation was a fuller picture of the complex psychological dynamics
(02:09):
and the coach athlete relationship, the ways those relationships can
go so wrong, and how athletes today are redefining their
roles as advocates. This conversation has been edited for length
and clarity. Hellsten, Hi, Dr White, It's so nice to
meet you. How are you? I'm well, how are you
(02:31):
both great. We really appreciate your time. I think even
just like kind of your background and title is a
good place to start, and what you've written about really
kind of overlaps a lot with allegations of misconduct that
we've seen in the end of us L. Can you
explain that a little bit more and how long you've
been doing this type of work? Yeah? Absolutely so. When
(02:52):
I was a professor in New York City, I received
a call from my father that my former coach being
accused of having a sexual relationship with a freshman high
school and I immediately knew it to be true. I
could feel it in my body. I would often say this,
(03:13):
and it was kind of downplayed a lot, that this
person should not be coaching girls in high school. I
felt inclined to reach out to this young girl. I
was not at this time trained as a survivor advocate,
being a woman in sport with a degree in sports psychology,
really wanting to empower female athletes. I was just attempting
(03:36):
to be, in my mind, a good human to tell
this young girl who was coached by my farmwer coach
that I deeply believed her within a community, that this
was a very contentious thing that was happening. Yeah, that, um,
I know for you, this is an extremely personal subject. Yeah.
So she was telling her stories and I started to
(03:57):
recognize everything that she was sharing. I learned from a
sixteen year old girl when I was thirty that gently
rubbing someone's wrist means I want to have sex with you,
and I was like, I knew in my body that
that had happened to me. I did not know at
the time that I had been groomed. It wasn't conscious
in my mind. And all of a sudden, after the conversation,
(04:20):
it was this realization that like this had been going
on for twenty some years, and so all of a sudden,
all of these memories and thoughts became very real for me,
and I knew then as adult that these behaviors and
things that had happened were not appropriate. I started recalling
(04:43):
him coming to my home. He came to the front
door and had a Lakers jacket, and he said, don't
tell anyone that I got it for you. You're gonna
be the best point guard from this town. All of
these memories, taking me raspberry picking alone, he regularly said
I love you, you know, and then started having conversations
with my parents, and my parents saying, you know, we
(05:04):
thought it was just a really special thing. You thought
you were such a special kid. And so he had
also groomed my parents can groom the community. So that's
really where my journey began. Shortly there. Later that summer,
I went through the survivor advocacy training with what is
now Resilience here in Chicago, and I've never looked back.
You know, those patterns when we talk about grooming or
(05:26):
coercion or some of these practices that coaches exhibit where
it really crosses the line. What are some of those
patterns that we see in behavior? Typically there's these three
areas generally that grooming occurs under the psychological, the physical,
and then the grooming of a community. So the psychological
will be things like finding out what the person likes,
(05:49):
starting to make you feel as though you're special, as
though you're unique, that they're spending one on one time
with you to make you better in your game. The
perpetrator is also starting to see how far they can go.
You know, is there going to be a parent, a guardian,
a friend, a boyfriend, a girlfriend, a partner that's going
to intervene from there. The physical could be things of
(06:13):
a hug, you know, the themes that you kind of
talk about their right I know in your book as well.
You know, trust seem to be this really key factor
of the coach athlete relationship if you want to perform
at your highest level. Right. So, and we normalize it
in sport. Think about when we're training in sport. A
lot of times it can be really ambiguous, like, oh, well,
(06:33):
I have to touch the athlete's body to help them
with their form, to teach somehow to box out, how
to swing a back correctly, a reposition and adjust in gymnastics,
it could be any sport. And so that becomes normalized
because is everyone a perpetrator who has to touch an
athlete's body or wants to hug an athlete after a
loss or a successful game. And no, but these are
(06:56):
part of like normalizing this physical touch that and transcends
to a hand on the knee, you know, arm over
the shoulder for a long time, holding hands on a
bus ride, you know, privately, those types of things, and
the athlete has been psychologically groomed to possibly normalize this,
(07:17):
to think this is what happens for when you have
a really great coach that cares for you. And then
also within the community, it's not uncommon a lot of
times for these perpetrators to be perceived as the nicest person.
Pitting the athlete against other people within their community. The
isolation is really key in the grooming process, So pitting
(07:38):
the athlete against their other teammates, pitting the athlete against
their partner or their parents, their fellow coaches as well.
You know, things like oh, yeah, that coaches really mean,
and I'm the nice coach, I'm the one who cares
about you. And so these are some of the things
that become normalized over time. And then it's a lot
(08:00):
of times too late when people are like, oh, this
is what happened. I mean, I wonder how what the
damage can be when that trust has then broken, and
you know, you start to have this realization of that
was actually totally inappropriate. What's the effect I guess on
recipients of that kind of behavior at the at the
hands of coaches disorientation. Right, the person who has made
(08:28):
you believe cared about you the most, right, had normalized
their behaviors and their abuse of power to you. As
a victim, or survivor, and then a lot of survivors
there's this disorientation of does the next coach really care
for me? Does my next intimate partner? What are their intentions?
(08:49):
And so with these violations of boundaries, it can be
confusing in terms of well, was I really agree to athlete?
You know, was I really going to be a champion?
Or was all of that just to create this intimate relationship?
And so there can be for for athletes, for survivors
(09:11):
and victims, this moment of what is truth and what
was the facade? And that's part of the work that
I do is our bodies know, our bodies keep the score,
and so right when a lot of times I'll say
if if it doesn't feel right in your body, trusted.
But we are so socialized, even in sport, we think
about like athletes, right, some of the things that we value,
(09:35):
play through pain, champions never quit, all these things. So
we teach people to disorient themselves, separate themselves from their
physical body, and that's part of the healing process for
for many survivors is beginning to trust themselves again and
that they are more also than what they endured or
(09:55):
what they experienced you're very focused on this type of work. Obviously,
by as you were kind of coming into the space
in this world in your research, did you feel like, Wow,
there's a lot more people than I thought that have
experienced something similar. Do you have any sense of how
prevalent some of these issues are full disclosure. The first
(10:16):
year that I began holding space for athletes, I was
blown away. I would do anonymous surveys after a session
and ask if they felt comfortable, you know, are you
a survivor yourself? And and it would be within an
athletic department, and not everyone shared their story in these spaces,
(10:37):
and not all of their survivorship happened within sport. I
would sit there after these sessions and I would really
have to take it in, you know, one out of
two in in some of these spaces was like, it
happens everywhere. Sexual misconduct is in every community, it's in
(10:59):
every organization, and it's in every family, maybe extended family,
and we are not talking about it collectively. And that
is part of the education that is necessary. We'll be
back after this when we talk about some of that
(11:23):
education of the term by standards I know was mentioned
a lot in your work too, So I wanna, I
guess explore that term a little bit more. What is
by standardism and then how does that play into how
we typically respond to these instances of sexual misconduct in
sport versus how we should be responding. Yeah, the nuance
(11:43):
is so important when we talk about by standardism. By
standardism is this phenomenon that people are persons feel something's off,
they recognize their acknowledge that there's harm being done, and
yet they do not intervene. And so it happens at
an institutional level, and it happens at an interpersonal level,
(12:06):
and bystanders do and don't intervene for a variety of reasons.
And so this is where like we have to hold
the nuance this person who is perpetrating, who is grooming,
they're also grooming a community, and there is risk in
being a bystander. Right. It could be social capital could
be like you know that you're gonna have to go
(12:27):
against the rest of your teammates and they may not
believe you, just as they may not believe the survivor. Right.
It could also be for an athletic trainer who witnesses something,
they could lose their job taking on harm yourself. Right,
these are the real things that are happening. So most
of the times we think we're gonna applaud you, there's
(12:48):
gonna be another constituency that is going to demonize you.
The more that we educate, then we can collectively be
with one another and normalize being a bystander, normalized not
doing harm to humans, not only in terms of sexual misconduct,
but all sorts of harm. Yeah. I think that's a
(13:08):
great point, and I think it kind of plays into
this repeated theme of like institutional failure in all these
instances we've seen lately, because ultimately, like the institutions are
made up of people that you know, need to take
action of some sort, either do or don't. So institutional failure,
I think one of the hardest things, and you you
(13:28):
named it. People make up organizations and institutions, and so
as people and people in power, it's first admitting that
the system, the processes they are serving the most powerful,
the most wealthy within the system, and so that has
to be interrupted. And so what is that play here.
(13:50):
It's money, it's capitalism, it's reputation. We need to have
more restorative conversations because we hear a lot of lip
service institutions. Oftentimes, well, all right, we'll bring in a speaker,
will do a sensitivity training, will will do a sexual
misconduct prevention you know, online training, and then we'll keep
(14:12):
things moving. The system wants to keep moving as is
because it's working for those in power. The accusations of
abuse were devastating, but not surprising. Was not indicted today
on several complaints of sexual assault. More than sixty women
have filed complaints so far. This comes about a year
(14:33):
after police investigation sparked by lawsuits by twenty two women.
Olympic gold medalist Alex Morgan noted the league was informed
of these allegations multiple times and refused multiple times to
investigate the allegations. We get into this victim blaming at
some level. Most of us have done it, and what
(14:54):
we don't really sit and recognize that only one out
of a thousand, statistically speaking, one out of a thousand
perpetrators ever go to jail or see prison time or
have a sentencing. One out of a thousand. So let's
sit with that reality and so believing survivors. Why would
a survivor want to come forward if they know that
(15:14):
the legal system isn't working for them. And so a
shift that I often will welcome and invite people into
is that if we know a survivor, we also know
a perpetrator. Believing survivors to me is believing that yes,
people experience this, but people are capable of harm. As
(15:37):
I work with athletic directors and coaches, oh, we just
have to focus on survivors and what creates a situation,
you know, and how do we support after the fact.
And there's not the same level of conversations as I
perceive them that are happening of like, oh, perpetrators are
here in this athletic department right now, right in this space,
(15:58):
and this feels in sound is really really wild for
a lot of people. We'll be back after this. In
your book, it says we should recognize when it comes
to sexual misconduct, if you have the potential to be
victims and perpetrators, you must live in this reality, face
(16:20):
it fullan and act as a community of by standards.
What does that really mean in action? I mean so
many things. Not every perpetrator goes into their abuse of
power with an athlete, or with a child or a
person with a long standard pattern of behavior, a coach
(16:42):
could be going in with good intentions and then things
can snowball, and so it's it's acknowledging that. So if
we think about situations where we could put ourselves in
that spot, then we can be like, okay, like I
need to be recognizing my own boundaries. I need to
recognize where I have power, where I do not have power,
(17:04):
and be taught this right. We do not innately think
about this on a daily basis. So so teaching people
to like really think about what abuse of power looks like.
I know that you do a lot of identity work.
Obviously there's it's a prevalent debate nationally right now about
books and schools and identity and how all of that
(17:26):
is acknowledged and can you talk a little bit about
that as well. Yeah, So I deeply believe our our
identities are are steeped in our socialization and and not
all right, and they're fluid, and we are socialized to
believe that they're fixed, right, And so I oftentimes will
name I think there's important things to name. I'm a
(17:49):
white cis gender, overly educated human being married to a
man raised Christian, right, all of the things provide privilege.
And so why this is also important, especially as we
related back to sexual misconduct, is that there is a
(18:09):
history where people who live in my identities, look like me,
are protected, are most likely to be believed. And this
is historical, this was by design, and we need to
sit with the reality that not all white men are perpetrators,
(18:30):
but historically, white men with wealth had sexual access to everybody,
white women, enslaved women, indigenous women, Latina women, Asian women.
Over history, across the world, white men perpetrate sexual harm
(18:51):
more than any other right, Like, that's like do we
just have to sit and breathe that in and who
is most protected? The white woman is most protected in
sci idea? And then who was least to be believed
time and time again, women of color, black women, and girls,
trans women. So why this matters to sport? Who's in
(19:11):
power and sport very white cis gender men. If we
want to talk about sexual less conduct, we also have
to talk about this. And so when I walk into spaces,
I have to absolutely share who I am, share my socialization.
Actually sometimes I need to step out of the way
(19:32):
because women like me, we've had the mic enough. We
need to hear what is really happening, and we have
to ask those who have been most harm how they
want us to make it right. We can't come and
say well, we're gonna do this, this, and this, when
those who have experienced the harm is saying, actually, what
I need to make things more right or better or
(19:54):
for my own healing is for this to happen. And
that's transformational and that takes a lot of courage to
Rea mad Gin. And until systems people have the fortitude
to reimagine, harm is going to continue to be done.
I'm Alexandrea. Payback is a production of The Charlotte Observer,
(20:14):
Raleigh News and Observer, McClatchy Studios, and I Heart Radio.
It's produced by Cotta Stevens, Casey Tough, Julia Wall, and
Davin Cockburn. The executive producer for iHeart Radio is Sean
ty Tone. For lots more on this story and to
support journalism like this, visit Charlotte Observer dot com slash
payback or News Observer dot com slash payback. And for
(20:37):
more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the I heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Nikki Glaser Podcast
Every week comedian and infamous roaster Nikki Glaser provides a fun, fast-paced, and brutally honest look into current pop-culture and her own personal life.