I was recently invited by the Croatian Olympic Committee to take part in their GUARD: Safeguarding Children in Sport project, which provides education for child safeguarding officers from sports organisations in 8 different countries (Croatia, Poland, Lithuania, Romania, Greece, Latvia, Macedonia & Slovenia).
The topic of safeguarding in sport has recently been gaining more of the attention it demands, which has led to the initial development of policies, frameworks and safeguarding officer roles. However, implementing these changes in ways that make a true impact for athletes from the grassroots level to elite is an ongoing challenge. This project aims to remedy that by providing resources and training to more than 2,000 child safeguarding officers in the region.
I was invited to take part in the second module of the programme, which took place in Zagreb. My role was to bring a lived-experience perspective in the form of a 30-minute presentation titled ‘Safeguarding in Perspective: A Survivor’s Story’. This involved disclosing my personal experience of sexual violence in Muay Thai, explaining how it impacted me, why I didn’t report it to authorities, and how I was treated by my sporting community afterwards. I then explained how this experience led me to conduct research on women’s experiences of sexual harassment and abuse in Muay Thai, and the work I have been doing to raise awareness, support survivors, create resources, and engage with NGOs.
At the end, I engaged in a Q&A with participants, answering thoughtful questions about my needs as a survivor, my recommendations for implementing safeguarding approaches, and how to address sexual violence in sport on a cultural level.
The session was well-received with multiple participants approaching me afterwards to thank me for my presentation, which was great to hear. A summary of the event on the Guard Project website reads, “A particularly reflective moment came from Emma Thomas, former athlete, sport ethicist and founder of Under the Ropes, who shared her personal survivor story — reminding everyone that safeguarding is a shared duty to prevent such experience in the future and emphasizing the relevance of adopting a trauma informed and athlete centered approach”. Additionally, I received the following kind feedback on behalf of the Polish committee.
A month after the event in Zagreb, I also took part in a follow-up hybrid event for the Lithuanian Olympic committee, in which I gave the same presentation online.
Revisiting My Story
It has been several years since I told my story in this way. After coming forward in the form of a podcast and article in 2017, engaging in public speaking and storytelling events until 2020, and answering inquiries from journalists on an ongoing basis, I wanted to move away from the framing of sharing my trauma – especially since not all of those experiences had been positive. I recently expressed that I’m now more selective in how I share my story. In this talk, I wasn’t just sharing my experience as a survivor, but also contextualising it within the arc of my experience as an athlete, advocate, researcher and safeguarding professional.
In this talk, I also found the courage to broach an aspect of my experience which I’d never previously disclosed — that in the aftermath of the assault, I allowed the perpetrator to make contact with me. This came after repeated harassment, both from the perpetrator and from men at the gym. My male training partners had originally been supportive, encouraging me to report immediately after I disclosed what had happened. However, they quickly began to turn on me when I wasn’t ‘getting over it’ as quickly as they thought I should, and would goad me to ‘stop being so miserable’. This only pushed me further into isolation, making me more vulnerable. Feeling isolated and misunderstood, I gave in to ongoing pressure from the perpetrator to make contact, seeking to make sense of what had happened to me through the only person who might have been able to give me an explanation.
This response is something I held complex feelings about for many years afterwards, but I now understand that it was a symptom of the lack of support I had. After years of activism against gender-based violence, I also now have an understanding of trauma responses, the nature of trauma bonding, and that seeking comfort in an abuser is not a rare or even abnormal reaction. Most importantly, I know now that the shame is not mine to carry, and this underpins much of the work I do today. I explained to the audience that in their work as safeguarding officers, they may sometimes be confused or even challenged by the ways in which survivors respond after experiencing abuse in sport, and that they should always be empathetic to hidden barriers they may be facing.
Key Takeaways:
- Athlete-centred and trauma-informed approaches are crucial
- Intersectionality is needed to engage a diverse range of survivor perspectives
- Policies and procedures aren’t enough alone, and cultural change is required to make a true, lasting impact.
Sports organisations must be led by the voices of those who have experienced harm in sport to create truly effective measures for both prevention and response. I’m glad that the Croatian Olympic Committee chose to embed a survivor’s perspective into this educational programme, and hope that the insights I shared there will have a lasting impact.
Emma Thomas, Founder of Under the Ropes
Emma is a sports ethicist specialising in safeguarding in Muay Thai. She’s also a former fighter, athlete-survivor and advocate, and has been writing about gendered issues in Muay Thai since 2013. After living in Thailand for 12 years, she completed a master’s degree in Sports Ethics & Integrity in Europe, conducting the world’s first study on sexual harassment & abuse in Muay Thai.
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