Child protection in voluntary sector sport organisations

This thesis examines the issue of child protection policy in voluntary sector organisations. More particularly it examines policies concerned with protecting children from child sexual abuse, within the Church of England and British voluntary sector sport over a period in the mid-1990s. Using a poststructuralist theory, specifically Actor Network Theory (ANT) this thesis explores child protection policy and discussion through case studies in the contexts of one Church of England diocese and seven voluntary sector sport organisations, utilising semistructured interviews and documentary analysis. It is suggested that the Church of England and British voluntary sector sport have common discursive 'frames', through the historical incorporation of Christian discourses into the beginnings of modem sport in the 19th Century English Public Schools, that support sexual violence against women and children and which provide legitimate identities for abusers. This cultural support for abuse, combined with similar incoherence in the organisational structures in both the Church of England and British voluntary sector sport organisations, is identified as preventing the effective dissemination of child protection policy, where such existed. The major difference between the two areas is identified as the focus within sport organisations on an 'organisational body project' by which organisational aims are achieved. This focus on the body in sport, it is argued, provides increased access and opportunities for abuse by those, like coaches, who most immediately manage the 'organisational body project'