Athlete victims of sexual violence: links to conformity to the sport ethic

Abstract In research, various reasons have been proposed to be able to understand the occurrence of sexual violence in sport. This article examines the relationships between conformity to the sport ethic norms and sexual violence among young athletes, according to sex and type of sport (individual and team). Athletes (n = 1140) from Quebec, Canada aged 13–18 years responded to an online questionnaire, which included two validated tools: a measure of conformity to the sport ethic norms (i.e. striving for distinction, self-sacrifice and refusing to accept limits) and a measure of experiences of sexual violence (i.e. by team-mates and coaches). Relationships between variables were examined using logistic regression analysis. The results show that increasing conformity to the striving for distinction norm contributes to an increase in the probability of being a victim of sexual violence from team-mates. Conformity to this norm is also associated with sexual violence by the coach, depending on the type of sport. Finally, increasing conformity to the norm of self-sacrifice increases the likelihood of experiencing sexual violence from the coach in an individual sport. These results may lead to the establishment of collective actions to influence conformity to the sport ethic norms and may pave the way for other studies to examine the factors influencing sexual violence since the phenomenon is multifactorial and little of the variance is explained by sport ethic.