Four Corners: June 6

BBC doco”Nowhere to Run”, by UK journalist Charlie Webster screens on Four Corners on Monday.

“Sports coaches can have sex with or sexually abuse a sixteen-year-old and pretty much get away with it.” Charlie Webster, journalist and survivor

Journalist Charlie Webster has covered some of the biggest sporting events in the world. But there was one story she was never able to tell. Until now.

“When I was nineteen, our coach was arrested and convicted, and it was only then I realised I wasn’t the only one he’d abused.” 

On Monday, Four Corners tells the story of what happened to a group of young female athletes who were groomed and abused by their running coach.

“Why did we never tell anyone? . . I just feel like I was first. I feel like I could have saved (them) or I could have said something.”

In a personal investigation Charlie Webster sets out to find her teenage running friends who all dreamt of becoming Olympic athletes, to learn the truth of what happened to them at the hands of a manipulative predator.

“To this day, I don’t know what my friends went through, can I find them, will they even talk to me? “

One by one she is reunited with the girls, who were once the best of friends and who also suffered in silence.

“I know now I wasn’t the first. I’ve spoken to another girl . . . she told me he’d abused her seven years before me.”

Disturbingly Charlie Webster’s investigation also reveals abuse by sports coaches is still not being adequately addressed by governing bodies.
“The more digging I do the more troubled I am by the scale of the problem in athletics.”

Charlie Webster is now using her story to advocate for better protection for young athletes, ensure abuse is exposed and perpetrators are punished.

“I just want to make sure nobody else goes through it. And people to understand why, to really understand why this has to stop.”

Monday 6th June at 8.30pm on ABC.