‘Coaches discussed abusing kids with pride’: The dark side of Pakistan sport

Sexual harassment and abuse is a scourge that continues to blight Pakistani sport, write Arslan Sheikh and Rabia Bugti, particularly among vulnerable young girls chasing their dream of becoming professional athletes

Thursday 20 February 2020 14:14 GMT
Comments
Children from the poorest families are most vulnerable to exploitation
Children from the poorest families are most vulnerable to exploitation (Getty)

In 1997, B*, a young, enthusiastic girl with dreams of representing Pakistan at cricket, left her home after bidding goodbye to her family.

She had been selected in trials run by the newly established women’s wing of the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) as a bowler for the national camp from where the squad was to be selected for their first tour to Australia. She was asked to pack her bags as she had to report to the regional academy in Karachi first, the provincial capital of Sindh where she lived, from where the team would head to Lahore. It seemed like the perfect script for a teenager, but the end came far sooner than she’d anticipated.

She reached the academy only to find out that she has been replaced by the daughter of an influential police officer from Hyderabad. She walked up to the manager and enquired about her room, at which the manager told her to check her name in the list posted on the wall. Her name was not on the list.

As her dream of becoming Pakistan’s pride began to shatter, the tale took an uglier twist. Her manager, with whom she had played in a domestic tournament a little while back, asked her to stay with her in her room until things were sorted out. “My manager said ‘I know you have been wronged’,” B recalls. “’I can put you back in’. She showed empathy and I was happy to stay with her and thought she was so nice.”

In 2017, a budding mixed martial artist from Quetta, Balochistan had applied for a Bachelor’s programme at the Punjab University in Lahore on a sports quota following a friend’s advice. T* wanted to pursue a career in mass communication, but she was admitted in sports sciences. The martial arts trainer at the university assured her that he would get her the desired transfer of department.

T believed him and appreciated the gesture. She shifted to the university hostel before the commencement of classes. A friend of hers was yet to join the university. The coach messaged her one day: “You must be missing your home, let me take you out and show you the city.”

“I found it odd and I made an excuse to avoid him,” T says.

Despite a difference of around 20 years, the vulnerability of both B and T were similar. The psyche behind harassment has always remained the same. They were seeking the help of someone they believed to be in power who could resolve their issues. They both saw their respective manager and coach as their guardian angel who was sent to help them.

Unfortunately, they turned out to be the perpetrators. “Sexual harassment is seldom about intercourse and more about power, where the perpetrator may be committing the act to intimidate or disempower the victim,” says Erum Ghazi, a psychologist who has been practising for eight years at several mental health facilities. “Moreover, it is irrespective of gender.”

As the sun set later that day, things started to get awkward for B. When she laid down on her bed, she found her manager lying beside her. “I asked her, ‘Are you fine?’ She replied ‘I’m scared’. I said ‘Fine, go to sleep’. I did not find anything fishy there.”

Dozens of probable future sports stars are doomed before they shine

However, after repeated advancements from her manager, she figured out where it was heading. It had become routine for the manager, who was around 35 years old at the time, married with two kids, to try to get closer to B and expect ‘favours’ from her. “I was fantasising about wearing the Star [PCB’s logo] on my chest, I was thinking, ‘Let’s do it a bit, she is just a girl’. then I was thinking ‘Why I have worked so hard if I have to do this’.” B felt lonely as she could not even talk to her father, whom she calls her friend, to discuss it.

A couple of days after avoiding her coach, T again received a message to go for an outing with him. “’Let my friend join the university, then we all three will go out together,’ I replied to him. On which he said ‘why will we take him with us’,” she recalls. This was the first instance where she sensed something was not right. He once asked her to send her a dance video. “I told him that when you get married, we will all dance together, and then you will see me dancing,” shared T. He replied, “You are cute”.

She had deleted all the messages received from her coach before university was started because she was afraid of anyone else reading them. As her course began, so did her training, and her coach’s behaviour was quite dubious. He used to praise her in front of all the other athletes and tell them to learn from her, even admire her body openly, which made her uncomfortable.

T was getting impatient; she wanted to practise mixed martial arts and progress in it. Instead, all she was getting was unwanted attention for all the wrong reasons. During one of the training sessions, she confronted her coach and told him, “If you do not want to train us, why do you call us all here and waste our time?” He did not like her tone and the already piling up of his frustration, from T not giving him enough attention, turned into rage.

***

The prolific Pakistani swimmer and Olympian Kiran Khan believes that no coach or any other figure can harass anyone if they are ready to stand for themselves. Khan has been representing Pakistan for the last 19 years and claimed that she did not come across a single case of sexual harassment until 2015. “How can anyone dare to harass you? When you allow someone to do so, they will,” she says. “I want the victims to speak up then and there. I have seen them suffer quietly because they are afraid about their career. If you stay silent, you will lose identity.”

On the other hand, Ghazi says that the stigma attached to sexual abuse or harassment in the conservative society of Pakistan is so haunting that the victims are afraid to speak about it. “Society is still not survivor-friendly. It is usually the survivor who bears the brunt.”

The young cricketer, B, was having the time of her life, playing the game she was passionate about and romanticising with the thought of rocking the international stage in Pakistani colours. As she puts it: “I was the happiest person on this planet during the day.” But her excitement used to fade as night approached. Her happiness would turn into horror as she had to face her manager again and had to avoid her sexual advances without offending her. Meanwhile, T had to deal with her coach every day during training sessions. Her studies were suffering and her sports career was not going anywhere.

B was getting the limelight, meeting big names of Pakistan cricket, and it was somehow satisfying her desires as a young sportsperson. “To be honest, I was enjoying the attention I was getting because of her. She was getting me noticed everywhere,” she says. Whereas, there was nothing to cherish for T. He was humiliating her constantly for the smallest of reasons. But things worsened and her mental and emotional suffering turned into physical abuse as well “for not satisfying his desires”.

During martial arts training sessions, the coach and the athletes pretend to hit each other, making sure that no one gets hurt. Her coach started to beat her intentionally and would call her brave and strong for taking his blows. “I had marks all over my body, there were bruises and I could not cry in front of him, I did not want to sound weak or show him that he is affecting me,” she says. T was in a fix; she felt she could not share this with her family, who would ask her to quit studies.

T remembers one specific day, when they were all training in the university premises, her coach challenged her to remove her tracksuit and fight him. T refused it straight away. A couple of days later, during another training session, he kicked her so hard that she fell a couple of yards away. “I had to hold my tears back. I just stood up and ran to the restroom. I cried my heart out there.”

Swimmer Kiran Khan: 'I want the victims to speak up' (Getty Images)
Swimmer Kiran Khan: 'I want the victims to speak up' (Getty Images) (AFP via Getty Images)

B and T had enough of suffering by the hands of their manager and coach, respectively. They both decided to end this mental, physical and emotional torture once and for all. Just a couple of days before the announcement of the national squad for the Australia tour, B decided to quit. T, on the other hand, opened up to her friends, who advised her to register a case against him.

“I was feeling disgusted with myself, if I were to be selected by serving such demands, I did not want Pakistan’s colours,” B recalls. She avoided sexual intercourse, but at the same time served her lust. “I was suffering from depression, but I was consoling myself that I am happy, I am going to live my dream, but it was never the case,” she adds. She communicated to management the reason why she was leaving without giving her manager’s name. “I told them that I cannot fulfil the demands some people were making. Despite telling so much to the board, the board never contacted me again,” she claims.

T, however, before filing a case against her coach, decided to resolve the matter within the university. She wrote a letter to the university management and explained how she has been manhandled by the coach. The varsity formed a committee and called T to present her case before them, but to no avail. “I asked them to see the marks on my body, there are bruises everywhere,” she said, but they told her to continue fighting as she was their hope to win the inter-university competition. “I put it straight to them that they have to remove the coach if they want me to continue the sport,” she says. Eventually, she had to bid farewell from the sport she played for the last ten years. T changed her phone number, her department got changed and she cut all ties with the coach and the athletes she used to train with.

***

These two incidents deprived the sports fraternity of two possible stars. Sexual harassment in the world of sports is much more common than anyone imagines. The curse is not only present at the national or university level, but the abuse starts at the grassroots level. Under-aged boys and girls become prey all around the world, and dozens of probable future sports stars are doomed before they shine.

Saleem Akhtar, who is now a government teacher in a small town named Dera Allah Yar near Jacobabad in Sindh, was once an emerging footballer. He spent years at academies and had advanced to the national camp, but could not make it to the national team. “The phenomenon of sexual harassment is nothing new,” says Akhtar. “When I used to play at the academy level in the 70s, it was common even then.”

Coaches and managers were involved in luring innocent children. He has been an eyewitness to many such incidents. “We used to have training sessions till the dusk. One day, A few other boys and I stayed a bit late at the academy. As it got dark, we heard a boy screaming from the ground. We rushed to see what was happening and a coach was forcing himself on the 14 or 15-year-old boy. As he saw us, he let him go,” Akhtar says. He says he never returned to the academy.

He shared another incident where his club team had travelled to a small city of Sindh, Mirpurkhas, to play a tournament. After having training sessions, a coach took a kid to the red light area in the name of showing him the city. “It is not always that a perpetrator wants to play an active part, sometimes they want to fulfil their desires passively.”

Akhtar claimed that he has seen coaches and senior players discussing how many kids they have molested as if it was some kind of pride. Even the top management of these clubs and academies can be involved. “The top management does not take any action against them, instead they expect these perpetrators to give them their share of meat,” he reveals. Pakistan’s law is not victim-friendly. The powerful rule here, and if there is an attempt to challenge the elite, they are punished.

***

In 2013, five girls, Seema Javed, Kiran Irshad, Hina Ghafoor, Saba Ghafoor, and Halima Rafiq, came up to speak against the chairman, Moulvi Sultan Alam, of the Multan Cricket Club, the cricket facility located in the city of Multan in Punjab, and the selector Mohammad Javed. According to the girls, they were asking for sexual favours for their selection in the team. “Moulvi Sultan was a powerful figure at that time,” says a local journalist, who had uncovered the story initially, on the condition of anonymity. A few other girls from the club had also accused Sultan of the same offence, but they were scared to come forward due to the stigma attached and expected consequences of their actions. PCB formed a committee to investigate the matter and, as expected, they did not find any conclusive evidence of sexual harassment. The authorities slapped the girls with a fine and a ban of nine months each.

If the punishment for challenging the system was not enough for them, Sultan, filed a defamation case of Rs2m (£22,000) on each of the five girls after their suspension expired. The 17-year-old Halima got panicked by the court notice and drank a full bottle of acid to take her own life. Almost all the whistleblowers who had gathered the courage to raise voice against the giant of the system quit playing cricket and disappeared from the scene. Halima’s family looked to proceed with the case, but Moulvi was reportedly able to ‘settle’ the matter outside the court, claims the journalist. The family of Halima relocated themselves and went into complete anonymity, their extended family cut all ties with the deceased girl’s family and there was no one to speak for the poor departed soul.

We managed to find Hina Ghafoor and tried to talk to her about the incident, but she did not want to discuss it.

The former Olympian Khan, who has won dozens of medals for the country, says the problem in Pakistan is that the poor cannot afford sports, and if they manage to progress in the field they face exploitation by the hands of influential people. “If a child of poor parents faces such a challenge, they cannot proceed it legally,” she says. “Even when a girl committed suicide, what did anyone do? There is no law in this country, the influential people have made a mockery out of this law. One call from a top government official and game over.”

Despite that tragic incident, PCB has not taken any concrete steps to counter harassment. “We don’t talk about such matters,” replied a PCB representative on being asked about the board’s policy about sexual harassment. “Our HR (Human Resource department) has a sexual harassment policy and we have committees to investigate if an incident happens.”

Lawyers encourage the victims to come out and take the legal route against the perpetrators, despite the haunting precedent. “The law on sexual harassment in Pakistan is nascent, particularly due to the patriarchal dominance in our society, which has only discouraged victims from filing a complaint,” says Mohammad Sheikh, a civil lawyer. Sexual harassment is difficult to prove in the court of law. “Victims should ensure that they have records or evidence of harassment in the form of text messages voice recordings or even video recordings,” he says. “They should remain connected with the witnesses of such harassment incidents to ensure that they are not pressured to withdraw or alter their statement.” It means victims like B, the five cricketers who were physically harassed cannot win their case unless there are eyewitnesses, who are willing to record their statements before the court.

Interestingly, there is just one provision for the same-sex harassment or harassment against the male gender in the Pakistan Penal Code, which is Section 509 (ii) that says sexual conducts or advances or demanding sexual favours or uses verbal or non-verbal communication or physical conduct of a sexual nature which intends to annoy, insult, threaten or intimidate the other ‘person’. Otherwise, all the other Sections of the PPC about sexual harassment explicitly uses the word ‘woman’. Moreover, Sheikh shared that there is not a single precedent of Section 509 (ii) in his knowledge. On enquiring about the same Section of the PPC from Hadi Ali, who is also a lawyer, he backed Sheikh’s statement and said that he has not come across any previous case of the mentioned PPC clause.

***

Sexual harassment is also used as a tool in Pakistani society to stop girls from chasing their dreams. Jaffa Football Club is the only club that allows girls to play football in Lyari, an old area located in Karachi, whose claim to fame is drugs, gang wars, and sports activities. Despite a rich sporting history of the locality, there are few elements, who do not want women to play football. “There are female boxers, karatekas, and martial artists in the area, but they do not want girls to play football,” says Hani Baloch, a Lyari native, who actively works for women’s rights.

The academy used to have a boys team, but they decided to introduce their girls’ team, challenging the norms of the society. They wanted a separate space for girls to train, so they picked a portion of the ground, where they train from 5pm to 8pm from Wednesday to Saturday. The District Football Association did not like the idea and they started opposing it. “They do not want us to train in the ground,” said one of the players. District Municipal Corporation West, which is a sub-division of Karachi Metropolitan Corporation, had allowed them to install a net to separate the area of the ground, but the local political forces are not allowing them to complete the work. The former councillor of the area, who himself is a former footballer, stopped the installation of the net and said, “what is this vulgarity where the girls are playing in shorts.” To keep girls away from the sport, the local political powers allegedly started to sexually harass them.

One day, after the training session, few boys on motorcycles chased girls as they were going home. First, they passed derogatory remarks about them and then held the hand of one of the girls. “She slapped the guy then and there,” shares one of her friends who was an eyewitness of the incident. “The boys started to threaten her with kidnapping and other severe consequences.” She ran back to the academy and started crying. After that day, she quit playing.

Even during the training sessions, a crowd gathers to see the girls play, they make indecent comments about them. Furthermore, few men seldom come in their playing area and urinate in front of them. “These are all tactics used by these people to keep girls away from football,” says Jaffa Football Academy’s spokesperson.

Pakistan is a cricket fanatic country, thousands of boys go to cricket academies to hone their skills. Even at the lowest level of cricket, boys are harassed in such a way that they do not even realise it for years. Usama Khalid, who had played at Under 15 level for Karachi back in 2012, shared how coaches and senior players intimidate young cricketers. “They spank you for no reason, they call you names, coaches ask their favourite kids to sit with them, if nothing, then they will just sit holding their hand, which is absurd, it makes them uncomfortable,” he recalls. He added that boys cannot do anything about it.

In this era of technology, physical activities of children are close to none. All they want is to play games and use applications on their smart devices. Parents tend to admit their offsprings to some sports academy, be it cricket, football, martial arts or others, to keep them active. Then there is the monster of harassment, which awaits them there. Adam Jama Waberi, an African coach, who runs Gulshan Soccer Academy in Karachi, advises parents to accompany them to the training. “I know it is tough to manage, but if parents can manage, they should drop their children themselves at the academy, see them play and then take them back,” he said.

Waberi asked parents to listen to what their kids have to say. “If your kids tell you that they have been facing any such issue at the academy, file a complaint to the academy at your earliest, do not take it lightly as it [harassment] is a common phenomenon all around the world,” he says. He shared his academy’s protocol that if they receive a complaint about a coach or a senior player, they keenly observe how he behaves around kids, if the offence is proven, strict action is taken against him.

Ghazi, the psychologist, wants parents to educate children about the rape culture and the factors that encourage violence against the opposite or the same gender. “Tell your kids that it is not fine to be a part of such a paradigm and to learn to be respectful towards others,” she says. The multiple times gold medallist for Pakistan, Khan tells youngsters not to worry about suspensions and bans when it comes to their dignity. She believes reputation and success come when they are honest and stand with the truth. She adds that victims are afraid to talk about their rights they are afraid even if someone else stands for their rights. “There have been many instances where athletes cried in front of me and when I spoke for them, I found myself alone, even the victims turned their back on me. If the situation remains the same, you can never fight against favouritism, harassment, and other similar issues.”

*Initials have been used to protect the identity of the victims

Join our commenting forum

Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies

Comments

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in