Kristyna Janku answered the phone to a police officer, not sure what she was going to hear. She had heard the rumors, the gossip, and was not sure what was true and what was not.
The defender’s former coach, Petr Vlachovsky, who coached women and girls at FC Slovacko for almost 15 years and was once voted the best women’s soccer coach in the Czech Republic, had been arrested, and she was about to find out why.
The truth was barely believable.
Photo: CTK via AP
“A police officer called me and told me what had been happening and said that I needed to come to a police station,” she said. “When I got there, I had to look at tapes, records, pictures, conversations he’d had online, and more. The police needed us to identify ourselves. Of course, we were shocked and couldn’t believe it was really happening, that it was for real, because it was like something you only see in films.”
Vlachovsky had been secretly filming Slovacko players in their changing room for four years. He had also been found to be in possession of content related to child sexual abuse.
The case is “the tip of the iceberg,” but “the majority of people don’t speak up, cases don’t go anywhere, players don’t know where they can report to or they don’t trust where they can report these cases,” said Alex Phillips, the secretary general of the global players’ union, FIFPRO.
“I couldn’t believe it had been going on for such a long time,” Janku said. “He was our coach for a long time, we had a good relationship with him. He was a person you could trust.”
In May last year, Vlachovsky received a one-year suspended sentence, a fine and a five-year ban from all soccer-related activity in the Czech Republic. Punishment from the country’s federation has not yet come, because by the time criminal proceedings were opened his membership had lapsed. The Czech soccer association has also not filed a complaint with FIFA’s ethics committee, which has the power to implement lengthy worldwide bans, but is discussing proposed changes its safeguarding policy around sexual abuse cases.
Janku now plays in Poland, and there is nothing to stop Vlachovsky from turning up in an opposition dugout there.
“I don’t even want to think about it,” she said. “It’s really crazy.”
There was outrage too in February when in Austria a man was given a seven-month suspended prison sentence and fined 1,200 euros (US$1,402) after being found guilty of taking secret videos and photographs from the changing room, gym and showers of the Altach women’s soccer team. He was also told to pay the victims 625 euros each in compensation.
Vlachovsky’s actions have left a mark on Janku.
“I look at some situations differently, with coaches or members of staff, and I’m more careful about some conversations,” she said. “I can no longer take some jokes as just jokes too. I maybe analyze situations a little bit more, but I didn’t and don’t want to let it have an impact on the trust I have for any coach or any man.”
Noncontact sexual abuse can have devastating long-term effects. Janku has not had to take up the offer of therapy from the Czech players’ union, describing herself as “one of the luckier girls” in terms of the psychological impact, but finds herself scanning for a possible camera in every dressing room, despite knowing she would be unlikely to see one even if it were there.
“You can’t shake this new bad habit of always looking around,” the 31-year-old said. “I’m more careful and hide more when I’m changing before games and after games. I make sure that doors are closed. More widely, I’m more careful too. For example, when I go to a public pool, it’s not like it was before, I try to not expose myself too much even when I’m in a private cubicle.”
Other players experienced vomiting, some needed to change clubs and some would never be able to go back there.
“The inaction from the governing bodies and the perceptions around severity — where people are like: ‘Well, they haven’t been raped, so is it actually that bad?’ — are harmful,” FIFPRO director of women’s soccer Alex Culvin said. “One of the players spoke about having some degree of body dysmorphia now as a result of this case, when a player’s body is their whole economy; that’s how they generate income.”
Janku’s therapy comes from using her voice.
“I see the chance for change,” she said, adding that all Vlachovsky’s victims believe his punishment was too lenient.
“It’s a joke, because that experience will stay with us for a lifetime,” she said. “ A lot of things have changed in our lives or in our careers as a result of this. It was never about money or anything like that — as female footballers, it’s never about money for us — but we didn’t and don’t feel okay with the fact that he can come back to coaching. Even now he can coach abroad and he can coach kids, young girls.”
Education and prevention initiatives around safeguarding are “higher up on the agenda of the football governing bodies,” but that “in the case of investigations and sanctions, what is needed is a funded international entity that is independent of the sports governing bodies,” Phillips said.
Part of the issue is that sexual abuse is in many countries not viewed as a big issue, he said.
“They also have no interest in doing much about it, because there’s no obvious gain,” he said. “At least that’s how it appears.”
“All the big abuse cases in football — Haiti, Gabon, Afghanistan — only came out because journalists, sometimes with unions, brought the stories into the public eye, even though the federations already had the information,” Phillips said.
Culvin said she is reminded of the start of the #MeToo movement.
“It was like: believe women. There’s an element of deprioritization of women’s players, especially the ones who are deemed less valuable, not the top players or the players who’ve got an actual platform. They are vulnerable. They’re not believed,” she said.
“Look at Spain and the [former Spanish soccer federation president Luis] Rubiales kiss. Players were speaking to issues for years, saying: ‘Our coach made us leave our hotel doors unlocked and removed our mobile phones’ — and it’s not treated as a big issue until someone gets sexually abused live on TV,” she said. “So, just believe players. That is the fundamental backstop of all of these examples. It starts and ends with that.”
“I don’t remember the moment, but ever since I was a kid, that’s the first thing I loved,” two-time NBA All-Star Isaiah Thomas said of his lifelong romance with basketball. However, that journey unfolded against the limitations of his size in a game where height often dictates opportunity — a reality he confronted throughout his career. At 175cm, Thomas is less than 2cm taller than the average Taiwanese adult male, while NBA players during his career stood at about 200cm on average. Compared with the NBA’s average career length of less than five years, Thomas’ 13-season career stands out as
Dakar and Rabat have longstanding ties, but relations have been strained since the Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) final, which Senegal won in mid-January before being stripped of the title, which was transferred to Morocco. Now, the AFCON trophy is something of a thorn in the two countries’ sides. On Rue Mohamed V, the street where Moroccan vendors are based in the Senegalese capital, a police van is parked. “The police have been on high alert since the Confederation of African Football [CAF] decided to award the title to Morocco, but there have been no incidents,” a local resident said.
Top seeded Jessica Pegula on Friday once again fought back from a set down to reach the WTA Charleston Open semi-finals with a 3-6, 6-3, 6-2 win against Russia’s Diana Shnaider. Defending champion Pegula has lost the first set in all three of her matches at the tournament so far, but again dug deep to maintain her hopes of retaining the title. The world No. 5 from the US took 2 hours, 10 minutes to defeat 19th-ranked Shnaider, relying on a formidable service game that included eight aces. Shnaider battled well in the first two sets and broke early for a 2-0 lead
Cambridge on Saturday made it four wins in a row as they comprehensively defeated Oxford in the 171st University Boat Race on London’s River Thames. It was Cambridge’s seventh win in the past eight years of a rowing race between England’s two oldest universities first staged in 1829. A world-class Cambridge crew were heavy favorites for victory. However, four minutes into the race, the crews came close to a clash of oars which could have caused severe disruption, with Oxford repeatedly warned as both team chased faster conditions in the middle of the river. For the first time in the
RSS