“If you’ve been abused, you don’t have to carry it by yourself or think you’re a bad person. I want to show people they’re not on their own.”
The coach was sentenced to 10 years in jail after being found guilty of several counts of indecent assault and one count of rape, and placed on the sex offenders’ register. Charlie didn’t know who’d ultimately reported him, but it transpired it was two of her old teammates.An old photo of Charlie and her teammates helps her begin tracking them down.
“I kept thinking, this is so much wider than I can deal with,” she says. She hopes the film offers solace to anyone who’s been through something similar. “Sometimes there’s a disconnect between human lives and policy, and the fact we’re talking about children here,” she says.In the UK, running clubs and other athletic sports are overseen by UK Athletics . In August this year, UKA published an independent review of their safeguarding policies by Christopher Quinlan QC, which made several recommendations for changes.
Another legal grey area, and something Charlie has lobbied the government to change, is the position-of-trust loophole. Currently, the law states that anyone in a position of trust is forbidden from engaging in sexual activity with 16 and 17 year olds, but sports coaches weren’t included in the definition of ‘people in a position of trust’.
“There should be a centralised licensing scheme for coaches, and an education resource to learn what a coach relationship looks like, what the red flags are. The thing about athletics is, a lot of the abuse is done under the guise of it being for your benefit. I’ve spoken to the NSPCC about this, and it’s something I’d like to try and write.”
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