Just weeks into this year’s hockey season, Stan Bowman, general manager of the Chicago Blackhawks and the 2021 U.S. Olympic men’s hockey team, resigned in the wake of allegations that Hawks upper management failed to act on a player’s sexual assault claim until after the team’s 2010 Stanley Cup championship was secured.
A few weeks earlier, a report by The Athletic brought to light allegations of sexual coercion, misconduct and harassment against National Women’s Soccer League coach Paul Riley. He has been fired by his team, the North Carolina Courage.
These incidents are just two of many alarming sexual abuse claims that have come to light in the past few months, from athletes in the Tokyo Olympics and national sports leagues to members of religious institutions and other organizations.
We continue to see rampant cases of child sexual abuse within institutions that time and again fail to protect the children for whom they take responsibility, alongside thousands of cases of abuse in greater society, where there is no direct oversight by a governing body.
If we are to truly prevent, rather than simply respond to, child sex abuse, the White House and bipartisan congressional leaders must act immediately and establish the first presidential commission to end child sex abuse in the U.S.
Let’s take lessons from abroad. Recently, a new report by an independent commission in France found that 330,000 children were sexually abused over the past 70 years within the Catholic Church. In 2012, Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard announced a royal commission into institutional responses to child abuse across sectors nationwide.
In 2015, the Parliament of the United Kingdom established a statutory inquiry to investigate where institutions have failed to protect children in their care.
These independent commissions successfully investigated the institutions, heard from the victims and survivors of sexual abuse, and have led to sweeping reforms to address the depth and severity of the problem.
Here’s why we need a similar commission in the U.S. A recent CHILD USA study found that 12.5% to 15.8% of children in elite athletics will experience abuse involving physical contact before they turn 18. One in five girls and one in 13 boys will experience childhood sexual abuse, the study asserts. For decades, institutions that were meant to protect children instead harmed them, and protected sexual predators rather than victims and survivors.
During her remarks to Congress, Olympian Simone Biles issued a scathing indictment of the United States Olympic &Paralympic Committee’s systemic failures to take action against former gymnastics coach Larry Nassar.
“To be clear, I blame Larry Nassar, and I also blame an entire system that enabled and perpetrated his abuse,” Biles said.
Yet on the same day Biles and her fellow survivors delivered their testimony, the U.S. Olympic &Paralympic Committee declared it would not take any action against Bowman, and he resigned only after widespread media coverage of the scandal. The Blackhawks and the USOPC never publicly responded to this outcry and even allowed Bowman to “step down” from his leadership positions rather than fire him outright.
A presidential commission would be directed by leading experts and researchers tasked with conducting research into current policies and abuses by institutions; holding public hearings; and conducting private hearings where victims and survivors could share sensitive information that would help inform the investigation and ultimate policy recommendations.
The commission’s finding would be used to create a national standard to prevent abuse and expand access to justice for survivors — rather than the piecemeal, state-by-state framework that exists today.
Every survivor of abuse deserves justice, and that justice should not be contingent on who the abusers are, or what institutions they work for. The U.S. needs sweeping reforms to put an end to decades of sexual abuse and misconduct by institutions, and that starts with a presidential commission to end child sex abuse.
Anything less is a dereliction of our elected officials’ responsibility to protect our nation’s children.
Marci Hamilton is founder and CEO of CHILD USA, a national nonprofit think tank that is working to end child abuse and neglect in the U.S.