Government Sponsored Professional Sports Coaches and the Need for Better Child Protection

The recent media publicity given to the case of Amy Gerhing, the young Canadian teacher acquitted of having a sexual relationship with two of her pupils is in marked contrast to the lack of interest shown to the later cases of Gary Hinds, John Glyn Jones, Mike Edge, Matthew Pedrazzini, Paul North, Frank Slatterwaite, George Ormond and others, all sports coaches who have been convicted of sexually abusing the children they train. This lack of interest is reflected in the recently published Department for Culture, Media and Sport and Sport England Final Report of the Coaching Task Force, a document that sets out recommendations for the future of coaches and coaching in English sport. In amongst the Report’s 84 pages only one sentence makes any mention of the protection of the children these 3,000 coaches have the potential to be training. This article briefly discusses the Report’s proposals, the current state of child protection in sport in England and Wales and argues that with the advent of the publicly funded professional coaches recommended in the Report, the time has come for sport to be made subject to more areas of child protection law than at present.