Abuse in sport is real and we can do more to call it out

IT always amazes me how abusive behaviour continues to poison sport. Furthermore, how much it’s denied and belittled by those who refuse to believe that it exists.

More than once over the last week, I’ve seen examples of denial, where the victims are called out for seemingly ‘making things up’, exaggerating, causing trouble or creating problems where problems previously did not exist.

This form of microaggression has been prevalent recently in cricket’s racism scandal, where a growing number of people have questioned the review undertaken by equality, diversity and inclusion experts Plan4Sport last year, which found Cricket Scotland to be institutionally racist. Former chair of Cricket Scotland, Tony Brian, believes the report to be ‘fatally flawed’. He’s not the only one.

I’ve heard murmurings behind the scenes for several months now from people who fail to accept the report and its 448 examples of institutional racism.

If truth be told, the referrals process following the report does appear to have been pretty slow — but it’s my understanding that an update will be published in the coming weeks. This should certainly help.

To request an inquiry into the whole process, however, is hugely demeaning to those who have suffered issues such as racism and misogyny — which was also highlighted in the report. Furthermore, it emboldens those who deny and negate.

Try explaining it, for example, to the whistleblowers who sat in front of me and told me, through tears, about the discrimination they’d faced during their time working in the organisation. One of them thought about taking their own life. Flawed? Really? Fatal? Nearly.

Which begs the question: who exactly is driving this agenda and what are their intentions here? If we really want to clean up the sport and kickstart its future, why aren’t we working together on this?

Why aren’t we all over those cricketing communities who felt hitherto hard done by? Surely this would be a positive start.

I don’t envy Cricket Scotland the task they have ahead of them, but what we don’t need now is to go backwards and start slinging mud again when there’s a real danger of further skeletons creeping out of the closet.

Whether we like it or not, racism isn’t going away any time soon. This week, American tennis player Sloane Stephens admitted that she has been the victim of racism her ‘entire life’ and insisted it was ‘getting worse’. She pointed to the FBI getting involved in investigations and to people creating fake social media accounts from which to direct their vile abuse.

The American spoke of the issue after her straight-sets victory over Karolina Pliskova in the French Open first round.

Tournament organisers have brought in a new AI platform this year, to try and limit this sort of online abuse.

Good as this might sound, it won’t prevent individuals receiving private messages into their personal accounts. Neither will it stop the naysayers criticising her for speaking out. A quick glance at Twitter and it is littered with negative reactions.

Mostly, they are pretty similar in tone. One suggests that if Stephens won more matches, she ‘wouldn’t have to resort to this victim crap’. Another asks: ‘How come no one ever makes Sloane provide proof of racism?’ Continue scrolling and you’ll come across plenty more.

This abject denial is utterly pathetic and symptomatic of a bigger problem in accepting these issues at the outset. Tennis greats Serena and Venus Williams have been targets of racist abuse, as have professional athletes in all sports, with Real Madrid star

Vinicius Jr the most notable recent case. Last week, I was invited to be a panellist on STV’s Scotland Tonight to discuss sexual misconduct in sport.

Denials are a huge problem when it comes to this particular issue and are one of the reasons these crimes continue to be perpetrated. Social media often sustains this cycle of mistreatment by enabling the persistence of harmful actions.

I have written before about gamblers abusing tennis and badminton players via social media. Earlier this year, Olympian Kirsty Gilmour revealed she’d received a death threat on Instagram, while others have had abusers slide into their DMs accusing them of fixing matches. Most involve abusers who appear to have lost out on their bets.

In May, American tennis player Taylor Townsend shared a screenshot of the death threat and racist abuse she received in an email following her exit from the Italian Open. It is too horrific to publish. It prompted fellow player Monica Puig to call on tennis authorities to do more. She said that not only was it a ‘mental health issue, it’s a security issue as well.’

The move by tennis authorities in Paris to try and alleviate the situation is at least a step in the right direction. Collectively, however, we all need to do more to call out abuse and to accept that it is there in the first place.