Emma Raducanu described how he was unable to see the ball in tears after detecting a stalker in a game last month and the image of the British tennis player taking refuge after the chair of the referee summed up the darkest side of the female sport.
Women’s sport celebrates greater participation and an unprecedented increase in its popularity, but the rise of exposure on social networks and the greatest visibility have made athletes more vulnerable than ever, according to experts.
“People want to take pictures, approach athletes and put their hands on them. With the stars of sport the dynamics is different, ”explains Marcellla Leonard, a protection consultant. “There is an expectation that they must be friendly to the public, that they must allow the public to touch them, that they must allow them to take pictures.”
“That gives permission to a stalker to do what he wants and is a really serious matter,” he added.
Although one in five women in the United Kingdom will suffer harassment at some point in their lives, there are no scientific studies about harassment of athletes, said Canadian forensic psychologist Sarah Coupland in an interview with Reuters.
However, between 35% and 75% of public people, such as politicians and television presenters, suffer harassment, he added.
Raducanu, 22, was not yet born when Monica Seles, number one in the world, was stabbed in the back by an amateur in 1993, in an attack on the court that highlighted the risk of harassment.
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Multiple harassment incidents
Despite being a little denounced crime, since there have been innumerable cases of harassment, several of them in recent months.
Last month, Michael Lewis was arrested for a severe crime of harassment after he repeatedly sent sexually violent threats and messages to the American basketball player of the Indiana Fever, Caitlin Clark. The 55 -year -old man told Clark that he had been spinning for his house “three times a day.”
In December, Robert Cole Parmalee, 40, declared himself guilty of harassment charges to Paige Bueckers, basketball player from the University of Connecticut. Parmalee had published on social networks that she was traveling to Connecticut to declare the player and get her to expel her from the university.
In February, the 200 -meter Olympic champion Gabby Thomas posted in Tiktok her terrifying experiences with a group of men who had harassed her in several airports. The Simone Biles and Sunisa Lee Olympic gymnasts and tennis player Coco Gauff were some of the athletes who responded to their publication, saying that they had had similar experiences while traveling.
Social networks give the athletes more visibility than ever, which is a double -edged sword, since it opens the possibility that followers develop “parasocial relations,” says Coupland.
“A person consumes a means of communication and begins to establish a unidirectional relationship,” he explains. “The fan considers that the relationship is mutual, although the athlete has no way of knowing that this person is there.”
Exposed by brands
Since athletes with great followers can amplify brands, sports sponsorship contracts usually demand that athletes publish on their social media platforms.
Stephanie Hilborne, executive director of the British humanitarian organization Women In Sport, said sponsors and sports organizations should stop pressing athletes.
“It’s very bad. It should be the other way around. Athletes should be protected more and advise them to expose their personal life less, ”he told Reuters.
“It is almost as if, part of the mechanism to correct the errors of the past, in which the female sport was not invested or sponsored, women would be expected to be exposed to an additional risk. I couldn’t be more wrong, right?
With Reuters information.
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