Childhood sexual abuse (CSA) is now a significant issue for organized sports. Since its “discovery” thirty years ago, research on CSA has been guided mostly by the “maleperpetrator—female victim” paradigm; hence, the perspective of the sexually abused male in the sports context has rarely been considered. This article considers organized male-sports as a social space that facilitates the sexual abuse of boys. Through promoting a sociological perspective on child abuse rather than an individualized and pathologized approach, I consider how the institutions of childhood, masculinity, and sports fit together and the contribution that sports make to the adult—child relation. I use Spiegel’s ecosystems model of the sexually abused male (SAM) and the sociology of sports literature to identify how some normative features of male sports contribute to the sexual abuse of male children.

M. (accepted). Development and initial factor validation of the Violence Toward Athletes Questionnaire (VTAQ) in a sample of young athletes. Society and Leisure.

Following a high-profile case of child sexual abuse in sport in 1996, the Netherlands Olympic Committee and the Netherlands Sports Confederation (NOC*NSF) established a telephone 'helpline' service on sexual harassment and abuse (SHA). In order to expand their understanding of this problem, NOC*NSF maintained written records of incidents reported to the helpline. These records revealed 323 separate incidents for the period 2001 to 2010. This paper presents a descriptive analysis of this data and discusses the findings. We conclude that whilst there are major limitations to working with information gathered in this way, a sustainable telephone 'helpline' can provide a valuable service for the sports community. Whilst official sources of data are known to under represent the scale of sexual abuse, through collaboration with researchers, such services can also generate important information for policymakers.