'I want to show people aren't alone’: Charlie Webster talks about abuse by her coach in new film

In a new BBC Three documentary Nowhere To Run: Abused By Our Coach, sports presenter Charlie Webster reunites with friends from her former running club, some of whom, like Charlie, were abused.

“If you’ve been abused, you don’t have to carry it by yourself or think you’re a bad person. I want to show people they’re not on their own.”

That’s how sports presenter Charlie Webster describes the experience of tracking down some of her teammates from the running club she was in as a teenager over 20 years ago. Charlie had been abused by her coach, and unbeknownst to her, some of the other girls had also been victims. Charlie hadn’t spoken to any of them since she left the club over two decades ago.

“I had no idea if anyone would want to talk to me,” she says of the task of tracking down people she hadn’t spoken to for so long and raising such a traumatic topic. “It was very anxiety-provoking. It triggered a lot of the emotion I felt when I was younger – I felt like I was doing something bad.”

The coach was sentenced to 10 years in jail after being found guilty of several counts of indecent assault and one count of rape, and placed on the sex offenders’ register. Charlie didn’t know who’d ultimately reported him, but it transpired it was two of her old teammates.

An old photo of Charlie and her teammates helps her begin tracking them down. In the picture is Becky, who won a bronze medal representing Great Britain at the European Athletic Championships in 2006, Emma, Rachel, Alice, Georgina, and Charlie’s best friend. A photo of the girls together as teenagers shows them smiling at a running track on a sunny day, with no clues that some had suffered abuse.

“I got hold of one of their mums, and she was like, ‘Oh my god, it’s so good to hear from you’,” Charlie says. The warm reactions she got from her old friends reassured her, but opening up old wounds left by the abuse was difficult.

“I had butterflies all the time, I felt sick, I was really emotional,” she says. “But I really believe that to properly recover and heal, you have to go to the really hard places. I needed to feel those emotions I felt when I was younger.”

In the documentary, Charlie talks of feeling guilty that the coach might have gone on to abuse others because she didn’t speak out immediately. But through her research, she learns she wasn’t the first.

“I kept thinking, this is so much wider than I can deal with,” she says. She hopes the film offers solace to anyone who’s been through something similar.

“I want to show people that those feelings [of guilt] aren’t because there’s something wrong with you – it’s normal to have depression and struggle with relationships and feel triggered by things. How can you go through something like that and be fine?” she says.

“I hope it shows people that they don’t have to carry it themselves and think it’s only them or they’re not good enough or a bad person."

Charlie discovers that Georgina, one of her former teammates, took her own life. Georgina’s family suspect she was abused.

“Sometimes there’s a disconnect between human lives and policy, and the fact we’re talking about children here,” she says.

In the UK, running clubs and other athletic sports are overseen by UK Athletics (UKA). In August this year, UKA published an independent review of their safeguarding policies by Christopher Quinlan QC, which made several recommendations for changes.

The recommendations included having a universally-applicable safeguarding policy for children and at-risk adults in athletics, and for UKA to set up a new, centralised reporting system for people to log concerns. It also called for lifetime bans to be introduced for offending coaches. Previously, it was possible for abusers to move from one sport to another as not all bans were permanent – something UKA’s CEO vowed to change earlier this year – and different sports clubs don’t tend to share information with each other, or even report abuse to authorities in the first place.

UKA told the BBC that a new reporting system called My Concern is up and running, and that it will “issue sanctions appropriate to the offence… [including] ensuring people who should be banned for life are banned for life”.

At present, there is no legal requirement in England for people working with children to report suspected child abuse to authorities, although there is statutory guidance in many professions saying it should be reported, and if it isn't, there must be "clear reasons" why not. After a consultation, the government decided against introducing mandatory reporting laws in England, citing “a lack of academic consensus” on the effect such laws have on child protection. This means that, should abuse be reported to UKA or any other governing body in sport, there would be no legal obligation to report it to police.

Another legal grey area, and something Charlie has lobbied the government to change, is the position-of-trust loophole. Currently, the law states that anyone in a position of trust (such as a teacher or care worker) is forbidden from engaging in sexual activity with 16 and 17 year olds, but sports coaches weren’t included in the definition of ‘people in a position of trust’.

Alongside the NSPCC, Charlie called for this to change, and a bill to amend the Sexual Offences Act is currently going through Parliament.

One thing that won’t change simply with the introduction of a new law, though, is long-established culture.

“There’s a culture of fear and closing the ranks, so if you do report concerns, you can be ostracised,” says Charlie. “There needs to be a cultural change within UK Athletics, otherwise this is cheap talk.

“There should be a centralised licensing scheme for coaches, and an education resource to learn what a coach relationship looks like, what the red flags are. The thing about athletics is, a lot of the abuse is done under the guise of it being for your benefit. I’ve spoken to the NSPCC about this, and it’s something I’d like to try and write.”

Charlie continues: “I want them to stand up and make this count. You get more of a ban from sport for doping than you do abusing a child – there needs to be a massive overhaul of the whole system.”

In response to these allegations, UK Athletics told the BBC: "What Charlie and other victims have suffered at the hands of some individuals in the sport is unacceptable. The welfare and safety of athletes of all ages and at all levels is our number one priority and over the last 18 months we have been fighting to make crucial changes to ensure that nothing like this ever happens again.

"We have overhauled every aspect of safeguarding across athletics with extensive changes and increased investment. Our new structure includes a new team of specialist case workers, as well as the introduction of the ‘My Concern’ platform which has brought athletics in line with the recognised best practice across the sports industry.

"The improved approach is also now risk-based which enables earlier action to any report of negative behaviours and vastly strengthens the ability to conduct early interventions and prevent more serious issues. We urge anybody wanting to report concerns relating to safeguarding matters to visit My Concern, external." 

Nowhere To Run: Abused By Our Coach is on BBC iPlayer now.

If you have been affected by any of the issues raised, click here for advice and support.