In the last year, the world of elite sports has been repeatedly rocked by revelations from athletes who have come forward with allegations of abuse and misconduct at the hands of coaches and other powerful authority figures. In January, now-former USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar was sentenced to 175 years in prison for the sexual abuse of at least 250 gymnasts in his care, including Olympic gold medalist Aly Raisman. Since Nassar’s conviction, a number of other serial sexual abuse cases have been brought to light across a variety of sports, including swimming, diving, and tae kwon do.
While they are certainly newsworthy, we should not think of these Olympic abuse cases as new or isolated, but part of a long-standing system of greed, corruption, and oppression in which the desire for gold always eclipses the basic needs and well-being of vulnerable people, including young athletes and in particular, young female athletes. The Olympics’ black hole of accountability and inequality swallows not only the dismantled host cities and their displaced and disrupted residents, but also the safety and dignity of the athletes who are already pushing the limits of their bodies and minds just to perform in the Games.
Olympic athletes are already deeply exploited by Olympic organizers. Most American athletes are not paid for the extensive time they spend training and competing, pushing many of them and their families into dire financial circumstances. All Olympic athletes face harsh punishment for criticizing their sports’ organizing bodies, questioning authority figures’ decisions and behavior, or falling out of line in any way. It should come as no surprise that these environments have become breeding grounds for abuse and that survivors have remained silent for so long.
The unfettered access and control Larry Nassar had over the bodies of the 265 women and girls he abused amplified the same dynamics of exploitation and control that millions of other men – teachers, parents, lovers – use to abuse women and non-binary folks every day. By stripping women of autonomy over their own bodies and placing it in the hands of Olympic administrators, trainers, and coaches, the Olympics actively promote the patriarchal dynamics that allow men to exploit and abuse women. This power structure is central to the operation of the Olympics and cannot be changed through mass firings or toothless sexual abuse response centers.
In addition to recognizing the systemic causes of rampant sexual abuse across the Olympics, we also need to acknowledge that we cannot resolve or transform anything through equally oppressive bodies, such as the American judicial system and carceral state or Olympic organizers’ own internal proceedings. Firing individual coaches or organizers will not change the fact that the Olympics are predicated on profit and patriarchal values. Putting more people into prison cells does nothing to help abuse survivors heal and will only empower the police state. Judge Rosemarie Aquilina’s open advocating for the women Nassar abused by giving every single survivor time to speak openly in court about what she had experienced was liberatory; her remarks about hoping Nassar would be raped in prison only further normalize sexual violence. Celebrations of his punitive sentence supports discordant power structures our organization is actively fighting to dismantle. Our values will not be compromised: we can stand strong in solidarity with victims of sexual misconduct and still disavow America’s plaintive and discriminatory carceral system.
There will be no justice until we reimagine a system of sports that is free of profit motives and extreme power imbalances and a way of holding abusers and predators accountable that doesn’t engender additional violence of any kind or come at the expense of any marginalized people.