It was called “A Horrific Canadian Soccer Story—The Story No One Wants to Listen to But Everyone Needs to Hear”. It told the story of a giant cover-up in Canadian women's soccer—for over a decade—of a now-convicted sex offender.
In 2008, Bob Birarda was the most powerful gatekeeper in Canadian women's soccer, as the head coach above the Vancouver Whitecaps and Canada's under-20 national team. He was also an assistant coach at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. He was fired for sexual misconduct against teenage players after I, and others, had reported his abusive behaviour for over a year. Both the Whitecaps and Canada Soccer covered up Birarda's October 2008 termination, presenting it publicly as a mutual parting of ways, which allowed him to go back and coach teenage girls for another 11 years.
He was suspended from coaching the day after I published my blog in February 2019. My blog detailed how, between 2008 and 2019, I and a small group of my former teammates collectively asked for help to get Birarda off the field over 30 times, to no avail. We went to the police. We wrote a letter to the Whitecaps owner, Greg Kerfoot, and two of his top executives. We plastered the soccer complex Birarda worked out of with a hotline players could call if a coach made them feel uncomfortable. We went to B.C. Soccer with a police report and a victim, and told the story and shared evidence with more members of the Canadian media than I can count. We were gaslit and harmed repeatedly, telling our traumatizing story to people in a system we were told we could trust, but instead was designed to silence us.
On a personal level, during this horrific decade I struggled with depression and suicidal ideation and felt stuck. It was heavy, dark and everything felt hard. I hated returning to my hometown of Vancouver, and I struggled to be around what I once loved the most—the sport of soccer. How does one move on when one knows there's a predator having access to young girls? How does one go about feeling mentally okay, living in a world where leaders are actively allowing this to happen?
When I hit “publish” at 8 a.m. on Monday, February 25, 2019, I was exhausted, terrified and alone. I felt broken from a system that I've since learned was designed to break me, forcing me to choose between my own safety as a whistle-blower and the safety of the teenage players Birarda remained on the field with.
After I posted my blog, it quickly went viral. Soon after, other former Whitecaps and U-20 national team players publicly shared their experiences; and, most importantly, victims of Birarda finally felt safe to come forward.
Last month, Birarda was sentenced to two years in prison for sexual crimes against four former teenage players over a 20-year period. The last victim was from 2008, the year he was fired from both the Whitecaps and Canada Soccer.
Considering the insanity, lengths and harms of what we had to go through to get a now-convicted sex offender off the field, the question I continually ask myself is this: How many more Birardas are out there in this flawed system? How many more athletes are still being harmed?
Yet, the worst harm I experienced in the Canadian sports system came after my time on a field with Birarda. Abuse does not happen without enablers, and let me be explicit about our flawed system that covers up and enables abuse, as well as revictimizing athletes who come forward.
A report into the cover-up of Birarda was commissioned by Canada Soccer, and released in September 2022. Victor Montagliani and Peter Montopoli will both play a leading role in the taxpayer-funded FIFA World Cup that is coming to Canada in 2026 in their roles as the vice-president of FIFA and the COO of the 2026 FIFA World Cup Canada, respectively. Both were named in that September 2022 report as being directly involved in the cover-up that allowed a now-convicted sex offender to have access to teenage girls for a decade. People like this have no place in sport, and we need mechanisms to remove them. What kind of message does it send to be rewarded leaders of a taxpayer-funded sport, while simultaneously covering up child abuse?
On the financial side, a recently discovered entity called Canadian Soccer Business as well as the Vancouver Whitecaps, separately, have leveraged what should be a public asset in Canada Soccer for the financial benefit of their private businesses. These inappropriate, harmful financial relationships, fostered with no oversight to the detriment of players across the country on and off the field, continue to this day.
Andrea Neil, a long-time former player and coach with Canada's women’s national team, has also been a whistle-blower on these same issues against Canada Soccer for years, and has valuable information to share.
It is also important to address an entire industry that has been built off the back of a distorted moral compass synonymous with the current state of Canadian sport, where groups, like wolves in sheep’s clothing, lie. Examples include an Ottawa-based for-profit called ITP and a Toronto-based for-profit named Sport Law. People within both of these groups have presented themselves as a safe haven for Canadian sport abuse victims, not disclosing that they have business relationships with the very institutions that are causing these same athletes harm.
Let me use Sport Law as an example. Shortly after I published my blog in 2019, I was approached by a woman, Dina Bell-Laroche, who presented herself as someone passionate about women's issues in Canadian sport. I trusted and shared with her private details of our story. She did not tell me at any point that the company of which she was a partner, Sport Law, had relationships with the organizations that had harmed us. I would realize this violating conflict months later, when her group was hired to do an “independent” investigation for the Vancouver Whitecaps into our case. I say “independent” in quotation marks to highlight another normalized lie in our current system. An investigation is not independent if it is paid for by the very institution that has something to lose with negative findings.
I learned later in 2019 that Sport Law was also Ontario Soccer's legal counsel while running Canada Soccer's whistle-blower hotline. You heard me right: In the aftermath of the cover-up of Birarda, Canada Soccer was telling soccer athletes that if they'd experienced abuse, a safe place to call was a hotline run by Sport Law, a group that was being paid to protect the legal interests of the largest PSO under Canada Soccer.
What is clear to me in my lived experience in the Canadian sport abuse space is that we have lost touch with what is right and what is wrong. Let me say it clearly here today to those involved with ITP, Sport Law and other groups engaging in the above behaviour: It is not okay to present yourself to vulnerable abused athletes as a safe place to share information only to weaponize that information for the benefit of your businesses. It is a horrendous revictimization that far too many of us have faced, and this kind of unethical conflict-of-interest behaviour is one of many reasons why trust has been completely broken in the current Canadian sport system.
I am here today to say that enough is enough. The problem is not single “bad apple” coaches. It is a system that empowers abusers, harms and silences victims with no ability to safely report outside of the system, and offers no consequence to sport leaders who enable abuse. If we are serious about eradicating abuse, then we have to start treating the sport crisis as the human rights crisis it is and implement change to make accountability, transparency, integrity and basic human rights the heart of our system.
Systemic change means shining a light into the financial relationships that preserve power and uncovering and dismantling these relationships and systems that protect Canadian sport institutions at the expense of athletes' lives. Groups like OSIC are not the answer, as they are riddled with the same conflicts of interest and people described earlier. Only a judicial inquiry into abuse in Canadian sport, with a broad scope, will shine a necessary light on the harm of the past while rebuilding trust for a better future.
As I said in the closing lines of my 2019 blog, which sadly still remains true today, “what we experienced, and where we are now, is still so far from good enough.”
Thank you.
