Former Olympian Waneek Horn-Miller calls for inquiry to address abuse in sport | 24CA News
WARNING: This article accommodates particulars of sexual and different bodily abuse and suicidal thought.
A former Olympic athlete with a historical past of preventing towards abuse in sport says she needs an inquiry into beginner sport in Canada to deal with systemic sexual, bodily and verbal abuse of athletes.
Waneek Horn-Miller is the previous co-captain of Canada’s Olympic ladies’s water polo workforce. She was faraway from the workforce in 2003 over what Water Polo Canada claimed have been “team cohesion” points. She stated Canada’s beginner athletes need assistance.
“We cannot rely on current competing athletes to fight within their sports. You can’t, because that means the end of their career. And that is why I have been so vocal as a retired athlete to do something about it,” Horn-Miller — the primary Mohawk lady from Canada to compete within the Olympics — informed a parliamentary committee of MPs on Monday.
“I would like an inquiry, but we can’t have another inquiry that has no teeth. We have to do something.”
Horn-Miller first rose to nationwide consideration throughout the Oka Crisis when, aged 14, she was stabbed within the chest by a soldier’s bayonet whereas holding her four-year-old sister.
Horn-Miller, who now coaches water polo, joined Water Polo Canada’s range job drive in June of 2020 to assist the group’s efforts to battle systemic racism in sport.
In asserting Horn-Miller’s appointment, Water Polo Canada issued a public apology to her, acknowledging that she was compelled to depart the workforce earlier than the tip of her athletic profession.
“We sincerely apologize to her, and others who we have hurt and excluded,” the assertion learn. “We are reaching out to our current and retired athletes to hear their stories so we can learn from them.”
WATCH: Olympian says athletes cannot be made liable for preventing abuse in sport:
In her testimony earlier than the standing committee on the standing of girls, Olympic water polo participant Waneek Horn-Miller discusses her position as a retired athlete and her suggestions for the committee.
Horn-Miller informed the committee that within the wake of Oka, water polo grew to become her “suicide preventer … stress reliever.
“It grew to become rather more essential to me as my life type of spun uncontrolled within the political sense. I grew to become extra targeted on my Olympic goals.”
She said that, like many other athletes, she let the goal of getting to the Olympics and winning a medal convince her to accept racial and verbal abuse she would not otherwise have tolerated.
“It was well-known the abuse that happened, that the coaches held the facility. The rumours that existed have been of sexual abuse, verbal abuse, abuse of energy on a regular basis,” she said.
Horn-Miller said that she was told by the former captain of the team that she should brace herself for the abuse to come. She said she struggled with the atmosphere at first but remained “laser targeted” on getting to the Olympics.
“You have a dream of turning into an Olympian and you might be terribly weak. The energy is held inside the coach’s hand. You will do something, something to get your Olympic dream. It is an obsession that makes you weak to every kind of abuse,” she said.
WATCH: Elite athletes are “principally staff” of federal government: An Olympian discusses Sport Canada
Speaking before the standing committee on the status of women, Olympic water polo player Waneek Horn-Miller says elite athletes don’t get enough protection from the federal department.
After she failed to medal at the Sydney 2000 Olympics, Horn-Miller said, the abuse within the organization increased and she made a complaint.
Sport Canada and Water Polo Canada brought in York University to investigate, which found that abuse that was not sexual in nature had taken place. Coaches were fired and a new regime was brought in.
Shortly after that report was published, Horn-Miller was removed from the team. She told MPs Monday that she felt she had been labelled “the issue Native.”
“I spotted that there was no want inside Water Polo Canada to resolve our battle, our points, there was no decision, there was no reconciliation after,” she said.
The next generation
In October, four former members of the national water polo team filed a $5.5-million lawsuit against Water Polo Canada.
In their statement of claim, which has not been tested in court, the former athletes alleged that several former coaches and staffers working for Water Polo Canada subjected athletes to physical, psychological and emotional abuse and sexual harassment.
One of the coaches mentioned in the statement of claim coached the women’s senior team from 1985 to 2001 but was removed from his post after complaints about verbal abuse.
The statement of claim says that same coach was rehired two years later before being removed from his position again in 2011.
WATCH: Horn-Miller addresses the rehiring of a coach she says she lost her ‘career trying to stop’
Olympian Waneek Horn-Miller testifies before the standing committee on the status of women.
“They rehired this coach. I misplaced my profession attempting to cease it,” Horn-Miller told MPs, becoming visibly emotional.
“I used to be depressed and suicidal and I can’t let you know. If I wasn’t Native, and my group did not take me and say, ‘We love you, we honour you and we take care of you,’ I do not know what I’d have executed.
“I’m so angry that Sport Canada continued to fund an organization that went and rehired one of these coaches who continued to function without oversight, to ruin the lives of another generation of women. How can that happen?”
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