Non-contact sexual abuse is causing terrible harm – and football’s global safeguards are failing players

About the author
Kat Craig is an award-winning human rights lawyer and CEO of Athlead, a not-for-profit consultancy specialising in sport and human rights, with specific expertise in developing safe and ethical high-performance sporting cultures.

By Kat Craig

Horror. Outrage. Fear for the safety of a group of women footballers. Those were my reactions when I first read about players as young as 17 being secretly filmed in the changing room and showers of top-flight Czech club FC Slovacko.

Over a four-year period, coach Petr Vlachovsky exploited his power and his position to perpetrate voyeuristic abuse of his players. Perhaps even more harrowing: he distributed the content online.

No systems or people in the club detected what he was doing all those years or, if they did, no-one reported and stopped him. Instead, the abuse was eventually discovered by Czech police, who also found child sexual abuse material on the coach’s computer.

It was only after the coach’s arrest that players found out about this terrible breach of their rights. Only then that they learnt that strangers around the world had been watching them in their most intimate moments. Only then that they understood that the man tasked with driving their sporting success had in fact exploited their proximity and their bodies, for years.

Let’s be clear: this was not momentary lapse in judgment. It was a sustained, calculated, intentional and deeply damaging abuse of power, carried out in one of the most private spaces imaginable, against players who trusted their coach with their careers and their wellbeing.

And that is reflected by the impact it has had on the players. They have spoken, with great courage, about the physical and psychological harm caused. About vomiting when they learned what had been done to them. About the fear of being watched everywhere they go. About a devastating loss of confidence and trust in their body. These harms are very real, very visceral, and very damaging – especially for elite athletes.

Yet the harm, and the danger he poses, was not reflected in Vlachovsky’s punishment. He received a five-year domestic coaching ban. As it stands, he could legally return to football in Czechia in 2030. Moreover, nothing is practically stopping him from crossing a border and coaching elsewhere tomorrow.

What on earth makes anyone believe that someone who so intentionally, willingly abused their position, and exploited and harmed their players should ever be allowed anywhere near the sport at all? What will have changed after his five-year domestic ban has been served?

This case has highlighted, yet again, how drastically football is failing to protect players. That is because, for too long, sport has treated sexual abuse as serious only when it involves physical contact. But when abuse takes non-contact forms, institutions still downplay its impact. And, in doing so, it also stunts the potential of the women’s game: players depend on their physical and mental health. They should be focused on training, recovery and performance. Not grappling with the knowledge that strangers may be consuming intimate footage of them online.

That should alarm everyone in football. It should terrify anyone responsible for the safety and wellbeing of players. And it should infuriate anyone who genuinely wants to see women’s football excel. The suffering caused by non-contact sexual abuse is real. And football must stop treating it as less serious simply because there was no physical touch.

This must be addressed immediately because, under the current regime, this coach could be working with players much sooner than 2030. Perhaps the most dangerous flaw exposed by this case is how easy it is for sanctioned coaches to simply move on and coach elsewhere. There is no comprehensive international database tracking coaches banned or disciplined for abuse. There is no automatic system ensuring domestic sanctions are recognised worldwide. And there is no proactive global monitoring of safeguarding cases.

So, unless another football association happens to discover what the coach did, or victims go public, an abusive coach can quietly rebuild a career in a new country.

This is not a hypothetical risk. It happens repeatedly in sport.

What makes this even more staggering is that football already knows how to track misconduct internationally.

Anti-doping violations are recorded and enforced internationally. Athletes and support personnel who breach those rules are followed across borders in the name of protecting sporting integrity.

Yet when it comes to protecting players – especially women and children – no equivalent global safeguarding system exists.

We are effectively saying that doping threatens sport more than sexual abuse does. That the integrity of the game matters more than the integrity of its talent.

This issue should not require whistleblowers, player unions or survivors to drive accountability case by case. There are clear steps international football can take.

First, institutional mandatory reporting. National federations should be required to report all serious safeguarding sanctions to the global governing body, with consequences if they fail to do so. In this instance, the Czech FA do not have a legal obligation to report what happened to FIFA.

Second, worldwide enforcement. Where abuse is proven, bans should automatically trigger international review and extension where appropriate.

Third, a global safeguarding database. Just as with anti-doping, football must track coaches and officials disciplined for abuse and discrimination. Not just lifetime bans, but serious suspensions and findings of misconduct.

This isn’t about public shaming. It’s about protecting players and preventing repeat harm. When someone has shown a sustained willingness to abuse power and violate players’ bodies and privacy, the sport has a responsibility to ensure they cannot simply relocate and reoffend.

This Czech case is horrific. But sadly, it is not unique. 

Non-contact sexual abuse is consistently misunderstood and minimised. Institutional accountability remains inconsistent. And globally, dangerous individuals are still able to move freely through the game.

If football is serious about protecting players, particularly in the women’s and youth game, it must stop relying on fragmented domestic systems and survivor courage alone.

Education must reflect the real harm of non-contact abuse. Sanctions must reflect the gravity of the offence. And global tracking must become the norm, not the exception.

Abuse, and abusers, rarely stop at national borders. Football’s safeguarding systems cannot either. And no player, anywhere in the world, should ever be put at risk simply because the system failed to connect the dots.