Daphne Bramham: 12 years after harassment complaints, Whitecaps policies still lacking
Credit to Author: Daphne Bramham| Date: Thu, 19 Dec 2019 23:24:17 +0000
The Vancouver Whitecaps soccer club was the focus of international attention earlier this year, not for its play, but for its off-the-pitch failure 12 years earlier to properly deal with allegations of sexual harassment and assault.
For more than a month, fans walked out of games in an unprecedented show of support for former players from its now-defunct women’s team. The bad publicity led the team to hire Toronto-based Sport Law & Strategy Group to investigate and evaluate its policies both then and now.
Unlike most other Canadian sports organizations in 2008, the Whitecaps didn’t have a formal complaints policy, a code of conduct or appropriate oversight of coaching staff, according to the 32-page report released earlier this week.
The Whitecaps still don’t.
It’s a damning assessment. But it’s mildly summed up on page 26: “More work needs to be done in order for the Whitecaps to be considered as adopting leading safe-sport practices.”
Crucially, the report notes that even now “it is not immediately evident to whom a report of misconduct is to be sent or what happens to that report.”
It goes on to say that if there are complaints, it’s not clear how the Whitecaps would investigate or address them. It’s also not evident to athletes and others in the organization that if they do complain, they will not face reprisals or some detrimental blowback.
It would be bad enough if only the safety of adult professionals was at stake. But the organization runs mixed-gender and mixed-aged training camps including residency programs for kids under 15.
It’s the past that is the focus of the report and among the most disturbing sections is the 2017 case of a 15-year-old boy in the Whitecaps residency program, who was sexually assaulted by teammates in the locker-room.
It was 48 hours before police were notified. During that time, the boy’s mother has said that Whitecaps staff advised her not to contact police.
But the report says, “Staff were consistent in their recollection that at no time was the victim’s family advised not to contact police.” What they recalled is that they discussed the pros and cons of reporting to police.
But what is truly chilling is that the report describes the Whitecap’s response as “understandable and not uncommon among sport organizations.”
If that is true, it should scare the hell out of every parent whose kids are in sports, especially since its been proven over and over that sporting bodies often take their own reputation into account ahead of concern for the athletes.
As the report points out, the best practice is to contact police immediately and let the police, not the organization, provide advice. In most jurisdictions, school teachers have a legal duty to report any suspicion of child abuse. So too should coaches.
As for the complaints from women’s team members in 2008 about sexual harassment and bullying, the report largely exonerates Whitecaps management and shifts blame to an unnamed investigator. She was hired by both the Whitecaps and the Canadian Soccer Association in 2008 to look into two separate complaints against the coach of the now-defunct Whitecaps women’s team who was also head coach of Canada’s Under-20 women’s team.
(It’s noteworthy that the investigator never filed a formal report and did not speak to this latest report’s authors.)
While the complaints focused on inappropriate text messages, they were raised in the context of the coach having ready access to apartments where out-of-town players lived.
That no one in the Whitecaps organization — who included some fathers of similar-aged daughters — thought it was inappropriate seems naive, foolish and, frankly, rather extraordinary.
Even in those pre-#MeToo days, it’s hard to imagine that everyone — the investigator, the Whitecaps and the Canadian Soccer Association — thought that even though the complaints were substantiated, it was punishment enough to fire the coach.
No one seems to have given any thought to sanction him so that couldn’t continue to coach and use his position to groom other victims.
The man — whom The Vancouver Sun is not naming because allegations have never been proven in court — has continued working and was head coach of an under-17 girls team in White Rock until February.
He was suspended after a former Whitecaps and national team player, Ciara McCormack, made a blog post about what happened in 2008 that sparked the fan protests and eventually this report.
This week, Whitecaps owner Jeff Mallett acknowledged that there was room for improvement “primarily around communications.”
But the fact that no one in the organization thought it would be a good idea to give an advance copy to McCormack — who is now one of the sport’s leading advocates for better and safer sports environments — doesn’t bode well.
In this era when every week seems to bring another story about another professional or amateur coach having bullied, harassed, assaulted or abused children and adults, there’s no excuse for any sporting organization not to do everything they can to keep athletes’ work and play places safe.
The Whitecaps now have the opportunity and the tools to show how that can be done.
Twitter: @bramham_daphne