The Game Changers
In this award-winning podcast Sue Anstiss talks to trailblazers in women sport. These are the individuals who are knocking down barriers and challenging the status quo for women and girls everywhere. Along with openly sharing their historic careers, what drives them and how they’ve dealt with tough challenges, each episode explores key issues for equality in sport and beyond.
We’re incredibly grateful to Sport England who support The Game Changers through a National Lottery award.
You can find out about all the guests at https://www.fearlesswomen.co.uk/thegamechangers
Fearless Women in Sport
The Game Changers
Mhairi Maclennan: Ensuring sport is safe for everyone
“Anyone can get abused. Smart people, really intelligent people, old people, young people, beautiful people, average looking people. It doesn't matter who you are, you're not like exempt because of any characteristics that you have.”
Mhairi Maclennan, Kyniska Advocacy
Today’s episode of The Game Changers podcast could be the most important ever.
Over the past five years it’s been a privilege to share the stories of 150 trailblazers in women’s sport and to explore topics around equality in sport and beyond.
This final episode of series 18 considers a topic that should concern everyone that loves sport – how do we keep it safe for all participants? This episode is a must listen for all parents of children in sport, along everyone working in the sports industry.
My guest is Mhairi Maclennan, the co-founder of Kyniska Advocacy. Mhairi is an elite GB athlete, who, in 2021, made the extraordinarily brave decision to waive her right to anonymity after suffering sexual abuse at the hands of her coach.
Following a hugely impactful campaign that saw her coach’s three-year exclusion from athletics increased to a lifetime ban, Mhairi and fellow athlete Kate Seary founding Kyniska Advocacy, the UK’s only athlete-led and sport-wide safe sport organisation.
I learnt so much in this powerful conversation with Mhairi.
I was shocked to discover that there’s no obligation for sports to report coaches found guilty of sexual abuse to the police or local authorities; no central register exists to track banned coaches in the UK or globally and no independent body exists across sports to deal with the most serious cases.
Mhairi also provides incredibly useful guidance about what we should all be looking out for when it comes to abuse in sport, what the law says and what still needs to change.
In the episode we talk about Kyniska’s excellent Manifesto for the Future of Safe Sport. Here’s a link to the website where you will find it and many other useful resources: https://www.kyniskaadvocacy.com/
Thank you to Sport England who support The Game Changers Podcast with a National Lottery award.
Find out more about The Game Changers podcast here: https://www.fearlesswomen.co.uk/thegamechangers
Hosted by Sue Anstiss
Produced by Sam Walker, What Goes On Media
A Fearless Women production
Hello and welcome to he Game Changers. I'm Sue Anstis, and this is the podcast where you'll hear from trailblazing women in sport who are knocking down barriers and challenging the status quo for women and girls everywhere. What can we learn from their journeys as we explore key issues around equality in sport and beyond? I'd like to start with a very big thank you to our partners, sport England, who support the Game Changers through a National Lottery Award. I'm excited to say that in this, the 18th series of the Game Changers, I'm talking to founders and entrepreneurs the women who have set up organisations that help change the landscape for all women and girls in sport.
Sue Anstiss:My guest today is an elite athlete who has represented the GB team at cross country and on the track and earlier this year made her marathon debut in London, running an incredible 2.29 and becoming both Scottish and English champion in the process and becoming both Scottish and English champion in the process. Mh is also the co-founder of Kyniska Advocacy, the UK's only athlete-led and sport-wide safe sport organisation. Murray set up Kyniska following her incredibly brave decision to waive her right to anonymity after suffering sexual abuse at the hands of her coach. The mission of Kyniska Advocacy is to create a sporting world that protects, respects and celebrates women in sport. So, mari, you have had the most amazing season in 2024. Can you tell us about your marathon debut in London of such an incredible time?
Mhairi Maclennan:Thank you. Yeah, oh, it was the culmination of a lot of obviously physical training, but also kind of mental, psychological factors and, yeah, I don't it's hard to put words to it, to be honest it was. It was a phenomenal experience and I think when I crossed that line I felt, yes, pride and joy, but also just so much relief that kind of everything had gone okay. And you know, years leading up to making the decision to move up to the marathon, I'd kind of been plagued with more illness than anything else and I just, yeah, was so glad, I was so careful during the build to not get ill and it felt, I felt really proud to cross the line, kind of in a just being physically and mentally really well. So, cross the line kind of in a just being physically and mentally really well, so, yeah, it was good, it was a really amazing experience.
Sue Anstiss:And was that a time you thought you could achieve going into the race?
Mhairi Maclennan:Um, I think, like time, goals are something that evolve as you're training for a competition. So when I chose to do the marathon, I didn't think, oh, I want to run xyz time, you know. I chose to do the marathon, I didn't think, oh, I want to run X, y, z time, you know. I think for me the goal was do a marathon, be competitive and finish it. And then, yes, by the time I was, you know, 10 weeks into training, I think I had a kind of inkling that I wanted to run under 230. And, you know, on a faster course, maybe even faster, but it's a goal that I was kind of less married to, if you like.
Sue Anstiss:And how did that feel in terms of a marathon in itself, I should say I did run London 20 odd years ago in twice the speed that you did. I think that was just over five hours, so it's actually double the time. But how did it feel as your first marathon?
Mhairi Maclennan:Yeah, phenomenal, and so exactly double the time. But how did it feel as your first marathon? Yeah, phenomenal. Like we chose London because we knew that, regardless of how the actual race went, it would be an amazing experience. The like, the crowds were insane. The running through these streets was really cool. You know, they're iconic and I was actually saying to my now husband that I think if I'd done London a couple of years ago it would have meant less, because I didn't really know London as a city when I was in my early 20s. I just didn't spend much time there, but because we'd kind of our relationship had started there, you know, I was running past like, oh, I remember when we went there, or like, you know, and it's nice that you can also sightsee.
Sue Anstiss:So it was a nice first one to do what was it like to have that success after the tough few years you mentioned that you've had there did? Were you getting to a level that you'd always hoped you'd be at as a as a younger runner?
Mhairi Maclennan:yeah, for sure. I mean, it's such a I don't know why I've always I've always been very emotional about the marathon, even as a youngster, and I think running or being in sport is weird because your goals evolve right. So, like I wasn't one of those kids that sat and said I want to go to the Olympics, I just didn't think that I would ever achieve something like that, and I obviously still haven't. So it was more kind of yeah, doing a marathon, I think when I was a teenager I read, like Paula Radcliffe and Liz McColgan's autobiographies and I wanted to do a marathon because of that. So it was probably one of the longest standing goals I've ever had.
Mhairi Maclennan:And when I was at home one weekend to do the Inverness half marathon, which is Scottish half marathon champs I stumbled across like an old scrapbook that I'd kept as a teenager and and in there it was like things I want to achieve before 30. And one of them was run a marathon. I'm 29. I know, yeah, it was a hilarious kind of trip down memory lane. I'd also put like fall in love, tick, I was like 14.
Sue Anstiss:And what are your ambitions now? So can I have done that Is marathon now the distance that you will really go for in terms of future competition, or where are you? Yeah, I think so.
Mhairi Maclennan:I mean they take a lot out of you, obviously, and I think maybe that one took more out of me mentally than any other would, just because it's the first one and like I'd had such a rocky start to to get there. But yeah, I can't imagine myself doing a load more like 10k training specifically, like, I think, quite happy to do them as a part of a build, but I really enjoyed having that kind of long-term goal and everything else has a purpose behind it, whereas, whereas you know, when you're a bit younger and you've got more energy, more motivation, and you just, like I, was completely consumed by my running, I wanted to race every weekend, whereas now, like I can't think of anything worse. I just want to like know why I'm doing a race and it has to have a particular function or goal, or I'm not going to do it because I also have a life now.
Sue Anstiss:So, aside from all you do as an elite athlete, you're also the co-founder of Kineska Advocacy, a non-profit organisation with an ambition to see policy changes that would make the sporting world a safer, more supportive place, and your journey started when you decided to speak publicly about the abuse you'd suffered. I imagine it must have been incredibly hard decision for you to make at that time.
Mhairi Maclennan:Uh yeah um, it was. It was one of those decisions that kind of it took a really long time to get to the point where I was ready to do anything about it and I had obviously had encouragement from some. Like you know, my mum had always said you really, I don't think I never really disclosed the full extent of it, um, she just had a feeling that he was a bit creepy. And you know, she often said you really need to speak up about this, you need to it like it's your duty, and I just wasn't ready and I was scared and I didn't. You know, there's a lot of things that go on in your head when you're in those situations like I used to think, oh, I don't. You know, there's a lot of things that go on in your head when you're in those situations like I used to think, oh, I don't want to disrupt everybody else's training in the group, yeah, and like, take their coach away from them. You know, like failing to think I'm actually removing them from harm's way. And so, yeah, it wasn't. Actually I didn't do it alone. There were two other young women that came forward with me and it was really because of them that I came forward.
Mhairi Maclennan:I had left the training group at this point because of other allegations that had been made against him, but nothing had been done about them and I, so I was training with a.
Mhairi Maclennan:I had a female coach, um distance coaching, and these young girls, um, sent me a Facebook message and said oh, we want to report a coach and you probably know who, and we were told that you would be able to help.
Mhairi Maclennan:I don't know who told them I'd be able to help because I really didn't know what to do, but I just I think I suddenly realized this was much bigger than me and it was like I'd been sticking my head in the sand for a really long time and everything that had happened and everything I'd been told or that he had said over the past six years that I had been coached by him, came flooding forward and I felt awful for not having done something before. So I think I really took it upon myself to try and support the three of us to come forward and, yeah, make right what I felt I had been sitting on for too long. And how old were you then? So at that point I was 20, 23, 22, but I had left the group. I think I was 23 and I was 22 when I left the group.
Sue Anstiss:So it had been through your teenage, through through 16, that kind of key age, yeah yeah, so I stayed.
Mhairi Maclennan:yeah, I stayed way too long in that environment.
Sue Anstiss:And what was the process then? From your speaking out with these other young women to almost the creation of Kyniska as an entity? What's that journey been like?
Mhairi Maclennan:So around the time that we were reporting, there was another athlete who had created an Instagram page called Signpost to Safety and she had kind of set it up so that there would be a touch point for athletes before they went straight to welfare officers so they could speak to like a fellow athlete rather than going immediately to the welfare officers, just to kind of create that bridge of communication and it'd be less intimidating. And one of my friends was a part of it and had shared it on her story and I saw it and I thought, oh my gosh, that's so timely. And I think I just reached out to this athlete and I said, like what you're doing is amazing. Just knowing you're here and exist is a huge support to me. I'm going through a reporting process right now and she reached out and kind of became a huge support to me, like really, yeah, came into my life and you know she was the first person I cried in front of about this. I didn't know her at all, but she'd been through this as well and she knew what it was like and it was definitely uncomfortable because I was like I don't really want to cry in front of this person and I still didn't really know how I felt about any of it. But, yeah, she kind of stayed in touch and she, I remember, like it was beautiful, she sent me and the other two girls like some friendship bracelet that she said like united us through this awful thing that we were going through and it was really, really touching.
Mhairi Maclennan:And then when initially my coach was given a temporary ban so I think I can't remember if it was three or five years, but it wasn't very long and she reached out to me when, like the day that it had been published, so she obviously was like looking out for it because she knew that I would see it. And she reached out to me and asked me how I felt about it and I also hadn't really thought how I felt about it. I'd just seen it and felt incredibly relieved that I had been listened to and believed and they'd done something about it and I didn't really think, oh well, it's only temporary. And when she asked me, it kind of came again. The realization that he would very shortly be back coaching and in my environment really scared me and she said, look, I'm in conversations with another athlete and we're thinking about doing a campaign kind of on the basis of your case and we want to ask for lifetime bans for coaches that are found guilty of sexual misconduct and abuse. And I think because the whole process of like obviously being in an abusive, toxic environment and then also going through the investigation, it's so silencing because you're silenced by the perpetrator and then you're silenced in the investigation process because you're told you're not allowed to speak to people and you become really, really isolated. And although this campaign that they were doing was for good, because she said, oh, we're going to do it on your case, I thought absolutely not, I'm going to be involved if this is happening. So I kind of suddenly plucked myself out of this quite passive relationship with what had happened to me and said well, if we're going to war, I'm coming with you.
Mhairi Maclennan:And the other athlete that she was in touch with was Kate, who's the co-founder of Canisca. So Kate had kind of already written a public, open letter to Welsh Athletics about the lack of support she'd received when her coach was imprisoned. And we came together as a three and we worked pretty hard on the letter, which was an open petition to UK Athletics asking for this policy change. And it was quite successful and athletes listened to us and I think that that's what really rung true for Kate and I. The athlete who had set up the signpost to safety had sort of been battling against the system for some time already and I think for her this was the culmination of a lot of years of work and really took us tall, and her emotionally.
Mhairi Maclennan:And when we were successful and like getting a meeting with UK Athletics and they said they were going to change the policy, this athlete decided to take a step back and said I can't do this anymore. I can't be in this space. I don't think it's good for me. But Kate and I really felt like I had just arrived in this space and I'd felt so empowered and like emboldened by this experience that I decided well, I didn't really want to leave it. And Kate had said I don't know about you, but I also feel like this is just the beginning and she had a lot of experience in working in youth parliaments and at the time I was doing a PhD in Spanish literature. So like I was an academic, like I was sitting reading books and I probably wasn't really enjoying it that much like we were just coming out of second lockdown at this time and I, yeah, I probably felt a bit of a loose end with my life. And so when Kate said to me, like I want to do this on a more full-time basis, like I want to campaign, I want to make a change, like I think we're good at this and I think we do this on a more full-time basis, like I want to campaign, I want to make a change, like I think we're good at this and I think we work well as a team, like do you want to start a not-for-profit? I kind of just clutched at the opportunity and said yes, let's do it. And I knew absolutely nothing about policy change. I didn't even really understand what policy was like. I was like policy, what's that? So, yeah, that's kind of how Kineska came to be. You know, we then started. I started applying for jobs in policy and public affairs, which I obviously didn't get because I had no experience and I so I did an internship at British Heart Foundation in policy and public affairs.
Mhairi Maclennan:Whilst we were launching Kineska. You know, we did a bit of research about what we could call it and we affairs. Whilst we were launching Kineska, we did a bit of research about what we could call it and we thought what we were doing was reasonably different. We didn't want to have women in the name because we knew that the policies we'd be advocating for would impact and positively, hopefully impact everybody. But we wanted to make it clear that it had been a woman-founded thing thing. And I obviously had the literature background. Kate is really into classics, so we wanted something from Greek mythology. We thought that would give it strength and we came across Kaniska, who was actually a real historical figure, and that's how we landed on the name.
Sue Anstiss:I love that. I just quickly tell us about because I'm going to come back to talk to you about athletics. But Kineska was this extraordinary woman, wasn't she, in terms of all she did?
Mhairi Maclennan:she was. I'm actually going to also pull up our website because we've been pulled up for getting the uh, the exact wording on the wrong um, we actually feature in an article by an academic about misrepresentations of Kineska in modern times. So how embarrassing. But we were led to believe that she herself competed in the Interim Olympics, which is not true, because actually it was kind of what we would understand to be landed gentry and rich people, kind of royalty. They bought people to represent them. So she was actually a slave owner, probably, ultimately.
Mhairi Maclennan:But women were banned from the olympic sanctuary during the olympics and couldn't be a part of it in any way, shape or form. So she was trailblazing in that sense, and so yeah she. She would have been awarded the, the olympic crowns in the four-horse chariot race, two Olympic cycles in a row, so in 396 and 392 BC. And so, yeah, as the first female winner. I suppose in some ways she paved the way for other women to follow in her footsteps, which they did, and I guess how we posit it is that we are doing the work that she would be doing today if she was still around, particularly because she post facto erected a statue of herself, some of which still remains. And she says in it, and I alone say, of the woman, of all of Greece, take this crown. And so she was very bold, very brave, and yeah, we kind of take that energy into what we do. I love that.
Sue Anstiss:It's really interesting, isn't it? It's like being called up on the whole. Yeah, she's a bit of a kick-ass woman and then actually some academic comes back to correct you on things.
Mhairi Maclennan:Yeah, the academic was like it's not strictly true.
Sue Anstiss:I like your interpretation though it was great, yeah, sounds great. And just going back to athletics slightly, when you went because I think you must talk over that as if, oh yeah, then they changed it to a lifetime ban. But that's huge, isn't it that what did happen there, were you almost pushing on an open door when you went to see them? Is it something they'd considered? Had it been something they knew wasn't right? That it was this five-year ban, I think?
Mhairi Maclennan:a bit of, probably lots of factors and obviously I'll never know all of the factors because they don't work there. But, as with all of this work, we're standing on the shoulders of the women that have come before us and have trailblazed to be able to even have a place at the table. And I know that the athlete who had started Signpost for Safety or Signpost to Safety, rather had made a lot of inroads and she'd had an awfully difficult time trying to get and secure meetings. And we've spoken to people who they'll say, oh, I'm meeting with so-and-so and I'm like, well, good luck, we had a really hard time there and then they have a fine time, and so each and every one of us are making it slightly easier for those that come after us. But I think the door was perhaps ajar. The female CEO, joanna Coates, who was in position at the time, was really passionate about safeguarding and safe sports. She'd done a lot in her previous position at volleyball, I think yeah, so I think the door was slightly ajar.
Mhairi Maclennan:I also think that there had been a lot of negligence on this case previously. I remember myself, when I first joined the group in 2013, that my coach explained that he used to take girls back to his house to massage them, but then two girls tried to ruin his life and so now he could only do it at the track venue and obviously he'd already built trust and a bit of a relationship with me. So I thought, oh, that's awful, why would those two girls do that? But yeah, they obviously reported him and I just didn't. I wasn't aware, and that's part of you know. What we do now is like knowing the signs of abuse and knowing the boundaries that you should and shouldn't have with a coach, like your coach shouldn't be your masseuse at all or touching you anywhere, really, unless it's a sport that requires physical adjustments, and there they should be asking for consent. So you know, if I'd known that, I would have been like, oh right, maybe I'm going to find a different coach, but instead that's not what happened.
Mhairi Maclennan:And so I think, yeah, in part people prior to us trying to make change, in part them knowing that this case really needed to be acted on, and many people had reported prior to us. You know I had left the training group because two coaches had reported him a year before we came forward, so we were the last in a long line of reports that had just not been acted on or, you know, investigated properly. And I again, we can only speculate why. Perhaps you know the the evidence wasn't strong enough, perhaps they didn't um see enough, or perhaps the capacity and resource wasn't right, or perhaps they were protecting their own reputation. There's a whole plethora of reasons why that might not have been acted on. But, yeah, I think that's why we were listened to.
Sue Anstiss:I hope and on your website you share some pretty bleak statistics around the number of girls that have suffered sexual abuse in a sporting environment during childhood. I think globally like one in five women and girls, and clearly reporting abuse is one of the hardest things a woman might ever need to do. So how much does that reporting system and the response to it vary across sports today?
Mhairi Maclennan:Quite a lot, a lot, I mean we. So we've recently been doing some work with Scottish universities actually around their reporting systems, and it is complicated because sports unions or associations often sit separate to universities but massive, massive varying procedures and policies. You know, some universities will have coaching code of conduct, some won't, and same with sports. And I think the sports with more money generally will have slightly better processes and policies because they've got better resources to spend time creating them and they're not just putting out fires all the time. But that's the problem, or it's a big part of the problem is that there's no consistency in sport across. There's minimum standards before anybody holds me up which are the safeguarding assurances, and they are in place, but they're pretty rudimentary, you know like. One of them is have a safeguarding policy and you can download those from the internet.
Mhairi Maclennan:I think a lot of the problem is that overall there's a lack of like, care, um and humanity within these systems and these processes.
Mhairi Maclennan:So most governing bodies are going to have a process in place and a policy in place and they'll never turn around and say that they don't have one.
Mhairi Maclennan:But the problem is, you know, nine times out of ten there's something in their policy that they actually never uphold, or they'll say that a particular process is going to happen and that's not at all what happens.
Mhairi Maclennan:Some of that is just because of resource and demand, but some of that is because of negligence, and I think I recognize the difficulty that national governing bodies have when their purse strings are being tightened and staff are overworked and actually often safeguarding and the responsibility for it does rest just with the safeguarding team. That needs to change, because you know, we'll come in as an organization representing an athlete that's come through our support service and it's the safeguarding team we email and we're like you guys have failed on this and they feel like that's a personal attack because the whole responsibility of this just sits with them and nobody else in the organization is taking a concerned role and that's a problem. But yeah, fundamentally there's no, there's no follow-through, there's no care and there's no humanity with these things, because national governing bodies see a report as a problem and a threat to their reputation rather than seeing it as a learning opportunity and an opportunity to build trust with their sports community.
Sue Anstiss:And how have they responded? So I know it's a bit of a general all national governing bodies, but how have you found they've responded to your existence and the work that you're doing in this space?
Mhairi Maclennan:Really, varied, which is why it's hard to answer in general. We've got some really proactive national governing bodies that you know will reach out to us and want to speak with us. You know, when we first launched, scottish Touch Rugby was one of the first governing bodies that got in touch and really, really wanted our help. Others have been pretty hostile Kate and I have been called naive, incompetent and, yeah, plenty of other names and that's because, you know, yeah, I think that the space is filled with a particular type of, with a particular type of people or attitude, and we might think that we've cracked it. So, like often and this is not to say that there aren't amazing people who have these types of experiences but like work experience but I think that to assume that everybody who's had those work experiences is amazing is is dangerous, because we're all different.
Mhairi Maclennan:But there's a real tendency to hire ex-police officers.
Mhairi Maclennan:Now, you know as well as I do, there's lots of different roles within the police and just because you've been in the police force doesn't mean that you're going to have the expertise or experience to deal with a traumatized individual.
Mhairi Maclennan:We spoke with one safeguarding officer who quite openly boasted that they had been on murder investigation teams. Now they might have the right experience, but that in and of itself doesn't tell me anything. In fact, it's a red flag because it's a bit like well, if you're used to your complainants being dead, the fact that they're alive is already a huge win. So, to have the level of empathy that is required when you're dealing with people who are going through really traumatic things, I'm not sure that you're going to be the best equipped. So, yeah, I don't want to sit and cast judgments about what is the best work experience to have had to best equip you for the role, but I think, yeah, there's just a lack of consistency and I don't think that we're, I just don't think we've got it right. There's loads of amazing work happening, but it's really siloed and inconsistent across the board.
Sue Anstiss:And you talk about that. I guess that inconsistency. There's no independent body in the UK at the moment is there to review the big cases of abuse right now, so some might say it can be a case of sort of sport. Marking its own homework is a phrase I've heard used when it comes to those abuse cases. Why is that? And almost like from an outsider's point of view, it's like why does that not exist?
Mhairi Maclennan:Yeah, there's a real reluctance to bring in an independent body. We're actually doing a piece of work with uk sport around um, like it's called the uk safe sport project, and it's looking exactly at how do we, what is the answer? How do we fix this quite broken function within our sporting world? And a lot of people are nervous about an independent body because they feel that it takes the onus and responsibility completely off national governing bodies to too far an extent, which would leave, I guess, people vulnerable to not knowing where to go. Because I think the reality is, if you are in a remote or even rural club of which there are a lot in the UK because we have a lot of rural areas you're more likely to know the name of your national governing body than you are of an independent body. So it's the dissemination of information that's difficult. But an independent body also needs to be a standard setter, like it can't just be a case management system whereby the really serious cases are referred to them and they deal with them, and that's it. They need to like be setting what policies people need to have in place. They need to be writing those policies. They need to be probably an education provider as well, and, if not themselves providing the education, at least outsourcing and then ensuring that that education is rolled out to everybody, because everybody should have the same level of education. Because, as it stands, yes, sports are marking their own homework and your safety enjoyment experience of sport depends on your postcode and the sport that, nine times out of ten, you fall into or your parents take you to as a kid, and that's just like. It's just not where we need or want to be.
Mhairi Maclennan:And so, yeah, there needs to be an independent body, but what that looks like and what it's called is going to get people's backs up. And who pays for it? I guess as well, how do you ensure it's independent? So, what does independence mean and what does that look like? So, is it that it's a government body? Is that independent? If it's a government body, is it that the sports councils? Do we stretch their capacity and build another function into what they already do? That would probably require legislation, and governments really don't want to legislate on this because they don't recognise how big of an issue it is, because it's just sport, right? So what does it matter? And who's going to work there? So, like, how do we employ the right people. There's a recognition that we don't necessarily have the right people in these roles. Where's the money going to come from, like you said, you know, and and how do we find that money? And how much do we pay the people that are in these roles?
Mhairi Maclennan:And I think when you start talking about an independent body, these are the questions people automatically jump to, rather than what's the functionality of it and how does it work and fit into an existing system where there are already some independent bodies, so, like football already has an independent body. And how much of sport does it cover? Because at the moment, the way sports funded in the uk is elite sport is funded by uk sport and then the rest is funded by the other sports councils. And how do we get the sports councils to work together to figure out the solution? And I think that's yeah, it's no, uh, no mean feat, the task that we're trying to undertake, to kind of figure out what, what this looks like and how we might implement it.
Mhairi Maclennan:But yeah, like when we go to, if we have an athlete that comes to us, which this is basically all we do and they say I've had an investigation, I'm not satisfied, I've been totally re-traumatized by this process. I feel like shit, I don't trust the sport. They've ruined my life. We do a subject access request, we read it. It's awful. We go to the sport and they say, yeah, we've reviewed this with our internal safeguarding panel and everything was done to plan. It's like, well, yeah, of course it was done to plan. If you're checking with yourselves, you know if I want to give myself 10 out of 10 for something, I'm going to do it. So it's really hard to create true independence and at the moment, yeah, it's a totally broken system difference between legislation and policy and a government maybe not wanting to legislate.
Sue Anstiss:In the UK, we have positions of trust legislation, which is there to protect young children and young people and children from abuse by adults in positions of power of influence, and I know there were some changes made to that this year, I think, which closed a loophole that existed in sport for people aged 16 to 18. So can you tell us a bit more about that and what also still needs to change in that space?
Mhairi Maclennan:yeah, so, um, thank you, tana gray johnson, for this legislation amazing, um, yeah, so, basically, the positions of trust legislation now means that, uh, the word coach, or somebody who occupies a coach title position, falls into somebody who has a position of trust, and all that means is that they've got a kind of duty of care over others and the loophole that they've closed is that it's now illegal to have a relationship with somebody between the ages of 16 and 18 if you're in a position of trust, which is amazing. I've had conversations with Tanya about this legislation and she's herself frustrated that we weren't able to kind of make it historic. So if people within a certain time period you know, let's open it up to the last five years they can also retroactively apply the law, and we've dealt with and spoken with many athletes who would have fallen into that category and I think the principal reason that they didn't backtrack, backdate it is because they would knew they'd be inundated. But it's a huge step forward in terms of like a actionable piece of legislation that provides protection and hopefully acts as a deterrent as well against something that should have been happening anyway. But, yeah, the position of trust legislation is great. I'd love to see it extended particularly. You know, 16 to 18. Yes, absolutely no brainer, but we know that your frontal cortex doesn't stop developing until you're around 25. And I don't see why we shouldn't be using that as an argument to try and extend it.
Mhairi Maclennan:I think the other thing that we need to recognise, particularly in the UK, is that university age and I'm obviously passionate about it because I was 18 when the abuse started and I didn't consider myself vulnerable at the time. But I look back and I didn't know anything and I think there's lots of factors that can impact people's naivety levels, I suppose. But by and large, people in the UK in swathes, leave home at age 18 to go to higher education institutions, whether that's college or university. You're away from your parents, you're away from your family, away from your friends, so you're away from your parents, you're away from your family, away from your friends, so you're away from anybody that knows and recognizes your behavior. And so much of what we do around educating people in safe sport is around behavior changes. So recognizing that somebody might be on, might be experiencing abuse is about changes in their behavior. So whether it's changes in their psychological behavior or their physical behavior, but if you're around people that you don't know how are they supposed to spot any changes.
Mhairi Maclennan:They just assume that's what you're like, and that was the case for me and the amount of conversations I've had with people that knew me then and meet me now, it's actually really chilling and I find that one of the worst things about kind of being where I am now is is the person I thought I was when I was at university is so not the person I was, because people have said things like oh god, yeah, you're just so fun. Like I don't remember you like this at uni. I remember you being really like introverted or you know you were just seemed angry at the world. You know you seemed really uptight. These kind of words. And these are people, obviously, that I'm like very happy for them to kind of have these frank conversations with me.
Mhairi Maclennan:But it's hard to hear because I remember feeling like that and being like that and nobody could spot it, because these people just thought, god, she's a bit of a nightmare, like I don't really want to spend much time around her, don't blame them, but that's, you know, a huge loophole. That then, if the positions of trust legislation doesn't cover older than that, it fuels this assumption that the second you turn 18, you're completely cognizant of everything everybody around you is doing. You won't get manipulated, you can't be abused, and it's really dangerous because anybody can get abused, like smart people, old people, young people, beautiful people, average looking people. It doesn't matter who you are, you're not like exempt because of any characteristics that you have, and so, yeah, I'd love to see the position of trust legislation extended just to protect particularly that age group of that kind of moving to university or college and being away from family and isolated, because isolation is how abusers get people, and if we've already done that work for them by being isolated in the first place, it's so much easier and at university.
Sue Anstiss:So a professor couldn't have a relationship with a student. That's covered by legislation, isn't it?
Mhairi Maclennan:in terms of that position of power, no, it is yeah, I think I don't know if I actually would need to check. I don't know that a professor is listed as a position of trust it sounds like a no brainer and that it should be. But I don't specialise in education policy. I would be surprised if that's allowed, but it might be. I know when I was at university there were always rumours of, oh yeah, that professor sleeps with students, kind of thing. Um, but yeah, I think it's the kind of thing that you can lose your job over for sure yeah, absolutely.
Sue Anstiss:You've talked a bit about athletes coming to you and I know you're working with UK Athletics now to provide an athlete support service, giving emotional and practical support for athletes going through that reporting process. So is that the majority of your work right now? Is that a lot of? I know that's not actually the case, because I'm there's a whole ream of other things you're, so is that the majority of your work right now? Is that a lot of work? I know that's not actually the case, because there's a whole ream of other things you're doing, but is that the kind of core of the work that you deliver?
Mhairi Maclennan:Probably not the core. No, it's probably the thing I think is the most important or it feels the most important when you're doing it, but it's not the core of our work. No, but yeah, the support service kind of was born organically. It was never something that Kate nor I envisaged or planned to do, and certainly not something that either of us had training for when it first. When we first started kind of doing this out of necessity I think, because Kate had been public about the struggles she had faced, I had obviously been public in way of anonymity. And then we launched Kineska. Naturally people reached out to us if they were struggling and it kind of got to the point where maybe initially it was people we knew and so I was very happy to give advice as a kind of friend or known person. But quite quickly it became people that we didn't know and they'd be like oh well, do you mind? Actually also my friends struggled with this, do you mind speaking with them? And that was when I realised, okay, we need to formalise this and we need to like not to sound like a national governing body, but I need to protect ourselves because I don't want to give wrong advice. I wasn't trained to give advice on this kind of in that capacity at all.
Mhairi Maclennan:So two years ago now we formalized the support service and we've kind of built it out so that, yes, it's a bridge of communication between athletes and their sports governing bodies. We try to kind of take a bit of a bespoke approach whereby somebody comes through our doors, our metaphorical doors, we have a discovery call to try and understand the kind of oversight of what's happened. What is it that they're looking for in terms of support? Athletes don't always know that, and that's okay. And what can we realistically and feasibly do or expect from this like, I guess, relationship that we try to build with them? And we've got a pro bono legal team that help us if they need specific legal advice and we pass them on there. We've got a team well-being and performance ecologist. So for the, I can kind of do emotional support, but I can't do any psychological support. I'm not a therapist and I'm not a counsellor, so we would pass them on to Natasha should they need anything more specific and robust.
Mhairi Maclennan:And yeah, we've managed to get things. Like you know, we've had written apologies from sports. We've managed to get sports who like teams who recognize okay, we actually probably need to do some training. So we've come in and delivered some training on how to create healthy and supportive training environments. We have had re-investigations or investigations where there wasn't one. So, yeah, we've also had loads of disappointments. You know, we've also had like just no progress and sports that just keep saying that they've reviewed it and they've done everything they can. And those are the really hard cases because obviously it's horrible disappointing the athlete. But I also feel really personally like I'm disappointing a younger me and like I'm being failed by the system again. So long term, I'd love to probably think it's good for my mental health to remove myself from the support service somewhat and, you know, diversify the number of people and voices that are supporting athletes and you recently published a superb manifesto for the future of safe sport and I would absolutely recommend people read it and I'll add a link to the show notes as well too.
Sue Anstiss:And I think one of the things that really shocked me and I obviously I've been in the world of sport for many, many years, so I kind of feel I know the sport but there's no statutory requirement for sports organisations to report known or suspected child sexual or physical abuse to the local authority or to the police for independent assessment, and so that means that criminality might never reach the police, and I don't know why. I assumed, of course, that would be the case, but do you think parents of sports are aware of this? Parents of sporting children?
Mhairi Maclennan:you think parents are? You know of sports? Are aware of this? Parents of sporting children? No, and I think actually recently um, I'm sure it was simps but did a survey with parents and a lot of spirit parents actually also thought that sport was independently regulated in the way that the education sector is and they didn't know that. So when we talk about, like education required for the sports sector, parents are a huge part of that, like for young children in particular, obviously, like, if parents don't know, then like where are we going with this? Um, so it's not just educating coaches and staff, it's also educating athletes and parents and, like family members, support teams or whoever it is that's kind of around that athlete. But yeah, parents don't know a lot and that's scary.
Mhairi Maclennan:We actually deliver a workshop called creating healthy sports environments and we've got an iteration of it that's for organizations and for kind of sports governing body leads and we've also got an iteration that's for parents and athletes and I delivered one last week to a local running club here and it's just, yeah, it's amazing getting them all in the room and I usually split the room so that parents are on one side and the kind of under 13, under 15 girls are on the other side of the room, principally because there's also a bit where we talk about periods and who wants to talk about that next to your mum or your dad? But yeah, the parents want to know more and we don't that sports don't take any responsibility or role in educating them on the reality of, like, what policies are in place in the club? Like, do you have a social media policy? Do you have a safeguarding policy? Who's your welfare officer? And you know, this was a really, really proactive club because they've this is the second time they've had me in to do a session but when I asked the parents and children who the welfare officer was, nobody knew the answer like literally not a single person. And that's scary because, okay, we're being really proactive in this club because we're doing education which is not happening like at all or even close to on a wide scale. So you would think this is a really good club. I want to send my kids here, but none of nobody knows who the welfare officer is. So that's like a missing link. There's such an easy fix, but if parents don't even know who the welfare officer is, they certainly don't know that there's no statutory requirement to report child sexual abuse and they certainly don't know that there's no independent regulator. And I think that sport sometimes rests on its laurels a bit with that like, oh, we're unchecked because the education sector, parents are just going to assume it's the same.
Sue Anstiss:Yeah absolutely, let's say as well. I've been researching before talking to you. I did lots of researching. It kind of go down a bit of a rabbit warren of watching more, going to more websites and reading and that whole piece around what we mean by abuse. And I think for many people after the white review etc. We think about sexual abuse often with you know, athlete a and those stories. But actually just that abuse of athletes in terms of the bullying and domination and that kind of the treatment of athletes is so much broader than you know. That's almost at its extreme. It's all horrific, isn't it? But actually when we think about abuse it's a broader yeah, it's huge.
Mhairi Maclennan:There's a huge spectrum and I think you know sexual abuse is often sits at the top of the iceberg. Particularly in these kind of relationships where there's a power imbalance, sexual abuse is usually the last thing that these abusers get to and before that there's been this whole host of like awful stuff that's happened. And when I think about my behavioral patterns today as an adult and choices that I make or struggle to make, it's not because of the sexual abuse that I suffered, it's because of everything else that I went through. So you know, you're kind of conditioned and brought up into being this like massively compliant athlete and you're terrified of stepping out of turn because you know, like I have learned that if that happens, if I do that, if I go on holiday or if I get ill or if I get injured, I'm going to get frozen out and not spoken to for like weeks on end and just ignored if I turned up to training and that might seem like a small thing, but that has a massive impact on somebody's psyche. So even today, my current coach is the coach I had as a small child, like when I was in still living in Inverness with my parents, and I actually found that that was like the only coaching relationship I could make work, because I'm not scared of him, like I'm happy to tell him anything and I know that he's safe, but like it was so hard for me to learn how to be with another coach because they were new and I didn't trust them ultimately and I was just always scared of like upsetting them or and I and and I think that it's not just around coaches, like that's around everybody. So my husband tells me again and again like you need to express what you want and like your preferences more strongly, and I find that really hard because I have been conditioned to not upset a cool my mom obviously, yeah, so that I, you know, don't suffer the consequences, and so small things and big things, I just don't.
Mhairi Maclennan:I'm not very good at expressing my boundaries, I'm not very good at expressing what I want, and that's not because of the sexual abuse, that's because of like the emotional abuse, the psychological abuse and like physical abuse, which would fall into, for clarity, um, anything that's happening to your body. So if a coach is like forcing you to train through injury, um, or illness, or also using training as a punishment, so, like our coach is like forcing you to train through injury or illness or also using training as a punishment. So, like our coach would often send these like insane training regimes if you went on holiday and like you knew if you didn't do them that he wouldn't talk to you and you wanted him to talk to you because you thought that if you talk to him and he values you, then you're going to succeed in sport and you want to succeed in sport. So, yeah, there's a huge spectrum and I think that's the bits that's difficult.
Mhairi Maclennan:Like yesterday I was delivering an all day in-person workshop with sports leads in universities and there's a full chapter section that we spent sort of a an hour and a bit on around spotting signs of abuse. That's the bit people struggle with because it's yes, there's obvious ones, like bruises might be physical abuse and like okay, if someone's got an STI, like maybe there's sexual abuse going on, but it's, it's more than that. It's like does somebody become quite quiet? Like has somebody become nervous when they weren't nervous before? Like it could just it can totally change somebody's personality and that's really hard to reverse.
Sue Anstiss:And you're doing some work, aren't you, with a fantastic team at Leeds Beckett University's Centre for Social Justice in Sport and Society around examining those long-term impacts of coaching maltreatment in female athletes. I guess a little bit about why you've almost explained why you are undertaking that, but what do you hope will be the results of what comes from that?
Mhairi Maclennan:So I'm not leading this piece of work. It's actually Kate that's leading it because her expertise just much better fit that piece of work. But I guess I don't know that we've got hopes necessarily for the results. But I think what we want to show is that impacts from abuse in sport are long lasting and I think it would be good if you can even use that word but to be able to show that the impacts are really varied, you know, all the way from really struggling to stay in employment to, you know, struggling to maintain relationships or being mistrusting in relationships, things like the things that I've experienced. But having data to back it up and I think we have some of that data when we look at kind of studies around domestic abuse and they're like really powerful to be able to say to the government inaction on this costs you x amount every year.
Mhairi Maclennan:We don't have statistics like that and I think for a long time, perhaps for too long, we've been kind of trying to rest on the moral argument with sports that they need to change this because it's the right thing to do, because human rights are in law, so they need to prioritize human rights. But ultimately sports are businesses and they need money to run. So unless you are going to convince them that investing in safeguarding is going to make them more money, it's going to be really difficult for them to actually make that choice, even if, morally, they're bought in. So I guess we're trying to do research so that we can use it as a lobbying tool to try and create more change that's backed by data and evidence. And, yeah, hopefully we get there, because it's yeah, it's, it's a hard argument to make and I think that it's more pertinent than ever now because, with the growth and surge in women's sports and the visibility of women's sports, which is amazing, behind that boom is potentially neglect towards the well-being and welfare of those women athletes that are being catapulted onto the stage.
Mhairi Maclennan:And I, yeah, I went to a conference where they were talking about how to capitalize on this growth of women's sports and they kept calling it the product, the product, and I was thinking fucking hell, like pardon my French but these are people we're talking about. They're not products. That's, this is not. We're not commodities. And if you're shoving loads of games, fixtures into a season because you want loads of matches to be on tv, because you want to capitalize on revenue, those are people that are having to perform those matches and their well-being is not being prioritized at all. So I feel like the well-being discussion is like even more pertinent now, as we see this like kind of boost in women's sports and trying to maximize the visibility of women's sports, which is a really important thing to do so that we can get on equal footing. But can we do it in a sustainable way?
Sue Anstiss:I almost feel like there's so many. I'm conscious of your time, but there's so many other things I want to. I just want to ask a little bit about coaches, because I believe if a coach is banned in a sport right now, they could still go on and coach in a different sport. It's not a no central register. I feel like I'm just sharing all the bad news, but it is pretty shocking, isn't it? But no central register exists at the moment for coaches. Is that different anywhere else in the world? Or is that just weird in the UK? Because that just feels like madness, doesn't it?
Mhairi Maclennan:It is madness. Yeah, it's insane. So in Canada they do have a register, so you've got to have a login to access the register and you've got to know the register exists. So it's not necessarily like widely publicized that it exists, but it is there. But, yeah, that's correct. In the UK there's no register. There is a pilot work going on to create a workforce register, but the last I heard is that they won't be putting bans on it, so it doesn't really serve the purpose that it needs to.
Mhairi Maclennan:Because, yeah, I think this is the problem with sports bans right that, like sports, can only act within their jurisdiction, so a ban is only as good as the respect that the person who's banned has for that organization. There's nothing written in law to enforce the ban or uphold it, and so if you had somebody who just completely disrespects the ban, they can keep practicing in sport and they could keep coaching, and the most the governing body can do is like keep sending letters to them and telling them to not do it. But there's literally nothing enforceable. And if people don't choose to go to the police or if it doesn't meet the threshold for criminal proceedings, then that's where it ends and the ban is only applicable in that sport. So it's not like you get a sport-wide ban. So this happens all the time, where coaches will get banned from one sport and they go to another, particularly sports where it's potentially quite easy to like switch those skills, that skill set, to coach a different sport. So, like an individual endurance sport, you know, if you're a running coach, you can probably be a triathlon coach. If you're a running coach, you can probably be a triathlon coach. If you're a triathlon coach, you can definitely coach swimming, biking or running, and so you see a lot of switching there. But also, if you've already learned how to coach, it's not that difficult to learn how to coach a different sport. If you really want to, it's definitely something that you can do.
Mhairi Maclennan:So, yeah, a register would go some way to stopping that from happening. But it also like it does need to be a global register really long term, because we've also got loads of cases of coaches changing country and going and coaching in another country and these are people that like they're really dangerous. These are people and I think that's what we underestimate Like if you're going to the effort of changing countries so you can continue to coach, that's because you want to continue to abuse. Otherwise you'd find another job uprooting yourself so that you can continue to be in a position of power like that. That's, that's not a safe person to have a position of trust with at all.
Mhairi Maclennan:So, yeah, the coach, a coach license register scheme would be great, and I think that it can also be something that plays to the advantage of coaches who haven't done anything wrong as well, because you could use it as okay well, you know, I've had to look for a coach before. I could go onto this database and I could filter it by region. I could say I want a coach who specializes in marathon training and who's got expertise in female athlete health, and then you could find a great coach and like, actually, it becomes kind of like a LinkedIn for coaches, like it could be something that's like a really useful tool as well as keeping sport safe, I feel like it's not been a positively uplifting conversation, but in terms of hope for the future, I guess the changes that we are seeing and you know you're doing some incredible you, you and Kate some incredible work in this space.
Sue Anstiss:so how helpful are you that we are shifting and moving it kind of each time there's a policy change and legislation and so on?
Mhairi Maclennan:um, some days I feel more hopeful than others, but we are seeing a difference, like, I think, when I'm feeling really downtrodden, you've got to step back and I do think you've got to look back as far as five years, maybe 10. But when you do that, there's a huge difference. You know, like, okay, when you go, when you come forward, you might have a horrible experience, but at least you're coming forward, and that might sound piecemeal and like it's just not good enough. I agree, it's totally not good enough, but there is change happening and it is slow and to an extent we do want, need we need this change to be slow, because cultural change that really works is slow. We can't just change everybody's ideologies and psyche overnight. I wish, but we't, maybe.
Mhairi Maclennan:Today I'm feeling hopeful, other days I feel less hopeful and like working in this space is incredibly exhausting and it's really draining. And I know that Kate and I have definitely sometimes looked at each other like why have we done this? Like we could have had nice lives. You know where we're not faced with trauma every day, and you know, yesterday was one of those days. Those days, actually, I had had a really positive workshop all day with these sports leads at universities and everybody seemed really engaged and I was just like, oh, that's brilliant. And then I got a call from a journalist asking for us to comment on Stuart Hogg and his court case of domestic abuse and I was just like fuck's sake, like what a shit way to end the day. And that is kind of what this space feels like. For every good news piece it feels like there's 10 bad news pieces and it's very easy to get really downhearted, but must keep the hope alive who looks after you?
Sue Anstiss:how do you make sure you're you and kate are um?
Mhairi Maclennan:probably not very good at that. I'd, yeah, my Louis, my husband, is great and in fact without him I probably wouldn't have even come forward, um, because he was so supportive. But yeah, I think both Kate and I are really guilty of just not looking after our own well-being, um, because we always put other people's before our own. But I think we're kind of getting to a place in our team where you know there's there's seven of us now and there's four of us in a sort of, yeah, management type position, but not really because you know we're very non-hierarchical but we're very good at being like you look like shit, you need to take the day off, or like you need a break. You've been doing too much. You know, like last night, where actually the journalist had asked for a comment by that evening, I didn't write it, even though it was the request had come to me. I just said, guys, I need to go to bed and they were like go to sleep, I'll do it. So yeah, it's a learning curve.
Sue Anstiss:And the work you're doing is so, so important. So how have you been funded? And and is kind of future investment where does that money come from to enable you to do the incredible work you're doing?
Mhairi Maclennan:um, from the projects that we've delivered so at the moment. So I've literally just gone full-time at Kineska, um, as of like coming back from my honeymoon last week, um, but we I we always said that I would go full-time when we had like a year and a half to two years runway, and we've been able to do that because people have trusted us to deliver work for them and also because I got shouted at to stop accepting work for free. That was also a learning curve, uh. But yeah, we're now in a place where we've got enough kind of projects in the pipeline, have done enough that I can be paid, but yeah, we've not got any kind of formal funding. We're only just starting to apply for grants. I think Kate and I, when we first launched, we were just so focused on trying to get some change and like making sport a better place that we sort of forgot that we would need money to do it if we wanted to do it in a more full-time capacity.
Sue Anstiss:So, yeah, fingers crossed for a couple of grant applications that we've sent out and yeah that the projects continue coming in and, in closing, if you could ask one thing of listeners of this podcast or people working in sport what can we all do to help make sport a safer place? Great, question.
Mhairi Maclennan:I mean, I think there's an awareness piece. So I think part of it comes from my background as an education and I was a teacher before this. So I think that if everybody has an awareness then collectively we'll be better at spotting these patterns of behaviour and less tolerant of them. Sport doesn't exist in a bubble or a microcosm, so it is. This is a societal problem. Um, you know it's, it's about culture, it's not a political thing.
Mhairi Maclennan:So I think I think, like sharing liking, like any kind of organizations like the Army of Survivors, sport and Recreation Alliance, like ourselves, sharing work that we're doing, following us, liking our staff, I think can create a kind of collective awareness in the sports psyche.
Mhairi Maclennan:But you know, going and finding out who your welfare officer is and telling your club that the welfare officer doesn't just need to be there and exist but also needs to be visible, so small things like when a new member joins the sports club, reintroducing all of the key members of the committee, including the welfare officer, making sure that there's a social media policy in place for online harm, that there's a safeguarding policy in place. I think it's like doing checks at your local level, because that's what we can influence in our immediate sphere. But I also don't want to like put too much on the individual because ultimately the big organisations need to change the way they're doing things. But we do all have a role and I think it's. You can overcomplicate it until the cows come home, but ultimately it's like be nice and treat people with respect and humanity and humility.
Sue Anstiss:Don't be a dick goodness, what a privilege it was to talk to Mari and to hear about the incredible work she and the team at Kineska Advocacy are doing. If you'd like to hear from more trailblazers like Mari, there are over 200 episodes of the Game Changers that are free to listen to on all podcast platforms or from our website at fearlesswomencouk. Along with trailblazers and entrepreneurs like marie, you can also hear from elite athletes, coaches, broadcasters, scientists, journalists and ceos all women who are changing the game in sport. As well as listening to all the podcasts on the website, you can also find out more about the women's sport collective, a free, inclusive community for all women working in sport. We now have over eight and a half thousand members across the world, so please do come and join us.
Sue Anstiss:The whole of my book Game On the Unstoppable Rise of Women's Sport is also free to listen to on the podcast. Every episode of series 13 is me reading a chapter of the book. Thank you once again to sport england for backing the game changers and the women's sport collective through a national lottery award, and also to sam walker, who does such a brilliant job as our executive producer. Thank you also to my lovely colleague at fearless women, kate hannon. You can find the game changers on all podcast platforms, so please do follow us now and you won't miss out on future episodes. Do come and say hello on social media, where you'll find me at sue anstis, the game changers fearless women in sport.
