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Surviving child sexual abuse in women's artistic gymnastics

It's beautiful, because had I stayed in the past, I wouldn't have evolved as a person

Bibliographic Data

ID2378841
AuthorsNatalie Barker-Ruchti (0000-0002-3918-7904, Örebro University, corresponding author), Valeria Varea (0000-0003-3572-4976, Edith Cowan University)
Year2024
Volume59
Issue5
Pages660-678
Publication date2024-08-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueInternational Review for the Sociology of Sport (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1012-6902 • E-ISSN: 1461-7218
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/10126902231218180
OpenAlexW4389376210
LanguageEN
Citations received7
References cited54

The USA Gymnastics sex abuse scandal raised global awareness about child sexual abuse (CSA) in women's artistic gymnastics. The ensuing media coverage also centre-staged victims' survivorship stories, a process that for many moved from dissociating, recognising and disclosing CSA to feeling comfort when connecting with survivors and accepting CSA as part of their life history. However, scholarship on what survivorship from CSA in sport entails, and importantly, what it means to athletes, is limited. In this article, we frame the survival of CSA using Arthur Frank's socio-narratological conceptualisation of people being able to process the devastating consequences of a life-threatening and/or a life-altering event, and present the survivorship stories of two former gymnasts, Maria and Lucia (pseudonyms). For these two women, survivorship was facilitated by hearing others' stories of sexual abuse, purposefully facing their CSA experiences and connecting with one another later in life to raise awareness about sexual abuse in sport. Thus, in addition to presenting Maria and Lucia's stories for the purpose of providing CSA victims with a survivorship narrative, we outline and reflect on the role hearing and telling stories have in CSA survivorship

Art · Athletes · Feeling · Literature · Narrative · Poison control · Political science · Scholarship · Sexual abuse · Sociology · Suicide prevention · Survivorship curve · Gender Studies · Law · Medicine · Psychology · Social Psychology · Sport Psychology and Performance · Sports injuries and prevention · Sports, Gender, and Society

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Unique citing works7
Citations per year3,5
Citation span2024 - 2026 (3)
Citation velocitycurrent
Highly citedNo
Citation typesNeutral: 7
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