I echo what Ryan said.
In my hand, here, I'm holding the statement of a young survivor who was raped by her coach in the bathroom of the gym facility when she was seven years old. When she was a teenager, he returned to the gym after he'd been in prison, convicted of sexual offences against other children—not her, though. In 2015, she filed a complaint with the police. Not one of the coaches or leaders in her province came forward. No one would tell the truth. They all turned a blind eye and worked together to protect each other. Many of the coaches who knew he was in the gym with her are coaching at the national team level. They're still operational, and they work together to protect a guy who had already been to jail, so he was a known predator. Because she didn't get anywhere with the police, she put a civil case together and spent eight years.... This month, she was supposed to have her hearing. Six weeks before the hearing, all the defendants agreed to a settlement. They finally acknowledged wrongdoing happened.
However, it's the betrayal of the system. She told us—it's similar to what Ryan said today—that the betrayal of the system and of those whom she thought she could trust to come to her aid was more damaging than being raped as a seven-year-old.
I think the people developing all of our policies, from the very top of the sport chain down, need to recognize the dire harm they're causing. The negligence and conflicts of interest.... I don't want to name-call, because some people are well intentioned. Perhaps they've lost their way. I'd like to hope they are not evil people.
We are seeing the same people you had here last week, frankly, profiting off abuse in the sport. Perhaps they're doing some good work. I don't know who's doing the good work and who isn't, but some are profiting off the fact that the status quo is not changing and abuse continues. If there is no abuse, how are you going to research abuse? If all we need is education—if that's the only recommendation that comes out of the committees I've testified at—all the people doing the education are going to make a lot of money. However, they're just guessing at what, exactly, needs to be done. Even if those educators are well intentioned, we need them to be informed by evidence. We aren't going to tell our evidence to any of the researchers who have been in front of any of these committees.