I think the first thing is education. There were so many situations as an athlete where I just thought it was a consequence of being an outspoken person; I got benched or I had bad things happen to me. I think I learned two years ago that it's a form of abuse called “neglect”.
That's my big question: Why are we not educating children and parents as to what abuse looks like? You're never going to eradicate predators. They're always going to be there, but there are ways you can mitigate the damage they're going to do. I think that's the first thing. You need to empower children to know, and then you need to have a safe place to report.
For 11 years, I literally described every possible...to the point of postering up the sports complex where he was. Again, there was just nothing. There has to be some kind of entity that is removed from sport, because I think the biggest thing to recognize is that institutions are liable for abuse, so they don't want to empower the victim. That is the fundamental issue in the system.
Again, I think that in order to mitigate, you have to have an entity outside of anything that has to do with liability from the institution, an entity that provides legal support and therapy and peers who have been through it and who can help walk them through the steps they need. Educate them as to “this was abuse that happened to you” and “this was a criminal situation that happened to you”.
Again, I honestly and truly believe that if there was that kind of balance in the system, a lot of these power-hungry coaches and predators and whatever probably wouldn't do half of what they do, and I think athletes wouldn't be harmed for 11 years. My soccer career in Vancouver ended in 2008. It's 2022. I'm still talking about this. It should have been done in 2008. He should have been investigated. He should have gone to prison, yet so many of us over the last 14 years still have this situation running our lives.
I honestly and truly believe that if those sorts of things.... Again, it has to be outside the system. We have to treat it as a human rights thing, as opposed to a sport thing, because it's gotten so convoluted and the harm is so deep.