To explore socio-cultural factors related to sexual violence in Greek sport, we drew upon the cultural praxis heuristic proposed by Ryba and Wright (2005). We strategically utilized the cultural praxis framework to explore how the cultural setting of the country operates as an underlying factor in priming athletes to harassment and abuse and in oppressing them from speaking up. Cultural praxis is a critical approach to sport psychology that uses cultural studies to highlight the complex interactions of power that are sometimes taken-for-granted in sport and the sport sciences (Chroni and Kavoura, 2020). Specifically, this heuristic is asking us to step away from singular understandings of sport, and instead consider the phenomena that we are studying through a social justice and culture-sensitive lens (Ryba and Wright, 2010). It calls for blending theory, research, and practice (see Ryba, 2017) in ways that enhance our understandings of how to provide wholistic support and structures of care to athletes of all backgrounds and identities. Previous cultural praxis scholarship helped us to unravel the socio-cultural characteristics of the Greek sporting context that might constrain the experiences of Greek athletes (see Chroni et al., 2013; Kavoura et al., 2015) as applications of the cultural praxis framework can be found in the content areas of athletes’ careers and in understanding minority athletes’ and coaches’ worldviews, experiences, and identities (see Chroni and Kavoura, 2020 for an overview of existing research). To our knowledge, the potential of the cultural praxis heuristic has not yet been fully realized in the content area of sexual abuse in sport, even though several studies have emphasized the role of the cultural context in the perpetuation of these troubling phenomena (e.g., Brackenridge, 1997; Fisher and Anders, 2019; McMahon et al., 2020). In this paper, we use cultural praxis as the “how to” of conducting culturally sensitive, localized, and reflective research on the understudied topic of sexual violence in Greek sport.

In countries where we still lack data on sexual violence in sport and research on this topic has been met with resistance, scholars suggest that the use of secondary sources of data. Sources like media and court reports, police files, and data from criminal registers (Helweg-Larsen and Larsen, 2005; Brackenridge et al., 2008; Fasting et al., 2013; Sanderson and Weathers, 2020) can offer valuable information and help us understand sexual violence in sport. Accordingly, the present study draws on national and international media articles that reported cases of sexual abuse and harassment in Greek sport and were published between January 2021 and January 2022.

To identify the articles, we searched the European Newsstream database, as well as Google, using different combinations of the words, “sexual abuse,” “#metoo,” “sport,” “athlete,” “Sofia Bekatorou,” and “Greece” (in Greek language, “σεξoυαλική κακoπoíηση,” “#metoo,” “αθλητ*,” “Σoφíα Mπεκατώρoυ,” and “Eλλάδα”). These key terms were selected as they reflect the phenomena (sexual abuse), study population (athletes), and context (sport) that were of interest to this study. The term #metoo was also selected as it is a popular hashtag that athletes use when reporting experiences of sexual abuse in the media. We also decided to use the name “Sofia Bekatorou” as a search term, as in addition to firing up the #metoo movement in Greece, she has become a key figure in advocacy work related to sexual abuse and her name is often mentioned in the media in relation to other athlete-survivor stories.

In our dataset, we included media articles that included direct quotes from athletes-survivors to ensure that the athletes’ perspectives were represented in the data and excluded media articles in which the focus was not on the sport context, even if there were brief mentions to it. For example, articles that reported cases of sexual abuse in the context of arts. We also excluded duplicates and articles that focused on other national contexts, such as Cyprus. However, we decided to include articles in which the focus was physical and emotional abuse in sport, as these also relate to the culture of silence and facilitate sexual abuse. In total, this study is based on 36 articles that met our criteria; 14 international articles in the English language and 22 national articles in the Greek language. When presenting quotes from the Greek articles in our findings and discussion, these have been translated into English. While more articles can be found in the media, we stopped searching for data when our analysis reached saturation of codes (Saunders et al., 2018).

To uncover patterns in the data, we followed a social constructionist approach to thematic analysis, as described by Braun et al. (2016). Thematic analysis, as Braun et al. (2016) pointed out, is a versatile method for a range of research purposes, including determining how a topic of interest is formed in the media. As a first step, we engaged with the data at a semantic level to identify challenges, barriers in facilitating violence and in oppressing the speaking out about violence. Second, we coded the data, following a latent approach focused on the underlying cultural mechanisms that allow for abuse to happen and raise walls of silence in the Greek sport context. The codes were then developed and arranged into themes (Braun and Clarke, 2019), which we continued to refine and edit, looking also for disconfirming patterns that contradicted our evolving interpretations. While the coding of the raw data was data-driven, the development of the themes and overarching themes was both data- and theory-driven as existing knowledge helped us make better sense of the codes identified, and organize these in the most meaningful way (an approach also used by Skille and Chroni, 2018). This work of organizing data-driven codes and making meaning was informed by the cultural praxis framework’s notion of multiplicity regarding voices of cases and our interpretations, as well as by previous scholarship on sexual violence in sport, and literature on gender-based violence and gender stereotypes in Greece. During the whole process, we had extensive discussions about the politics of research on such a highly sensitive topic and we were conscious that themes did not simply “emerge” from the data but were generated through the collaborative efforts of the two researchers (Braun and Clarke, 2019). While we wanted to make sure that athletes’ voices are represented in the data, our focus on the underlying cultural context led us to include in our analysis also other voices, such as those of the journalists, perpetrators, lawyers, politicians, and social scientists that were quoted in the media data.

When carrying out reflexive cultural sport psychology research, scholars must acknowledge their own experiences and subjectivities, as well as their influence in the study process (McGannon and Johnson, 2009; Ryba, 2009; Schinke et al., 2012). Thus, our reflective account is presented here focusing on how our subjectivities, past experiences in sport, and epistemological situatedness played a role in conceptualizing the study, reviewing the literature, making sense of and interpreting the media data, and developing this manuscript.

We are Greek women, feminist and cultural sport psychology researchers, who have left Greece in order to pursue transnational academic careers abroad. Yet, we see ourselves as insiders in the world of Greek sport, as we both have trained, competed in, and coached (different sports) in Greece for several years. Through our advocacy and scholarly work, we have tried to mobilize change for all, and women in particular and bring something back to the sports that we loved and their communities (e.g., Chroni and Fasting, 2009; Kavoura et al., 2015). Having lived, trained, researched, and provided applied sport psychology services in Greece, we felt equipped to understand the cultural complexities of the Greek society, sport system and the difficulties women face when trying to navigate in this male dominated terrain. Particularly, our experiences in the Greek sport settings echo the literature findings of women who feel discomfort with the dominant patriarchal understandings and the unequal gender power relations that are engrained in our sporting contexts (Kavoura et al., 2015). When thinking of our training practices and work in Greece, we can both recall times during which we felt gender harassed (discriminated because of our gender), sexually harassed (in the form of unwanted sexual attention and comments; see Chroni and Fasting, 2009), and sexually abused (in the form of unwanted sexual coercion, see Chroni and Kavoura, 2022). Moreover, as insiders to the Greek sport culture, we recognize that we share the same understanding of social practices and our subjectivities have also been constructed through negotiations with the same cultural discourses (see about negotiation processes of women sport scientists, Chroni et al., 2021). However, as gender scholars, living and working in contexts that are considered to be more egalitarian and safer, we were also able to distance ourselves from the taken-for-granted cultural understandings and interrogate the dominant discourses and socio-cultural practices that exist in our home-culture and might be responsible for the walls of silence that exist around sexual violence in sport.

Given the sensitivity of this research topic and pre-existing relations with survivor-athletes whose stories have been depicted in the media and were used in this study, our research was guided by relational ethics (Ellis, 2007). According to Ellis (2007), relational ethics prioritize ethics of care (Gilligan, 1982), mutual respect, dignity, and connectedness, between the researchers, the researched as well as the communities and the settings they study. Drawing on the principles of relational ethics, we were guided on moral, ethical, and methodological level by the question “What should [we] do now?” (Ellis, 2007, p. 4). We acknowledge here that the first author had extensive ongoing conversations with one of the athletes-survivors and that we both were more familiar with one of the stories and not all of them. While the content of the conversations was not used in this manuscript, it triggered discussions between us regarding how we would approach the stories “in a humane, non-exploitative way, while being mindful of our role as researchers” (Ellis, 2007, p. 5). We wanted to be “caring, fair, and transparent” to all the women who would help us learn through their words, regardless of knowing them in person or not, and avoid being influenced by some stories more than others. We wanted to treat the women, their stories and ourselves with impartiality and respect, to tell the story of a hurtful Greek culture without violating the intensity of the lived experiences, but also, we wanted to protect and preserve existing relationships. The richness of the data and parallels in these women’s stories helped us focus on the content and on uncovering socio-cultural factors that conditioned them into accepting violence and not speaking up. Upon completing the analysis and looking back at how we treated the data, what we identified within it, we believe that what conversations with athletes-survivors did was to inspire and commit us to continue working through the ugliness of sexual violence stories and translate these into knowledge that can bring change in our native country.

To keep the home intact, the collective side via its hereditary prowess and powers is holding back on change and progress, as the individual victim female-athlete is accepting the hierarchy and is staying with the known that feels comfortable. “Home” is not used literally here, and is a colloquialism for the larger milieu of Greek sport, sport stakeholders, politics, policy makers, sport organizations, but also to the victims, their homes, families, environments. Holding back on change is realized via, outdated, authoritarian, abusive coach-centered coaching, and training practices; a legal code and practices that do not recognize a victim’s trauma, involve non-supportive conditions, lack protective mechanisms, overlook the time it takes for a victim-survivor to come forward; and lastly policy change that does not materialize (see Table 1).

The Greek sport context was portrayed by some athletes as a dreadful culture that operates with outdated, rough coaching and training practices, where the coach exercises power wrongfully causing physical and psychological harm and where athlete-centered coaching that cares for athlete well-being and safety is not practiced. As an international article describes:

Based on developments in knowledge on athlete training and coaching, scholars proposed a shift toward athlete-centered coaching two decades ago (Lyle, 2002; Kidman and Lombardo, 2010). Athlete-centered coaching prioritizes and actively cares for athlete well-being (Campbell et al., 2021), takes a holistic approach to athlete development through ownership, responsibility, initiative, and awareness (Pill, 2018), and prevents athlete maltreatment (Kerr and Stirling, 2008). According to Gervis and Dunn (2004) and Kerr and Stirling (2008) unequal power dynamics between coaches and athletes and abusive coaching practices (emotional, physical, and sexual) are predisposing factors of sexual maltreatment. In addition, based on a study with 104 female athletes in Greece, authoritarian coaching behaviors is a strong predictor of sexual harassment experiences (Sand et al., 2011). The coach-centered approach and abusive coaching practices presented in the quotation above were reported years later after they happened indicating the priming of these athletes to accept this as the price to pay on the way to better performances (Chroni, 2015).

Within an unequal and abusive context like this, it is not surprising that athletes feel that speaking up is not safe and would not lead to justice, even years after the abuse was experienced. The legal system, its processes and enforcers discourage victims from speaking up and appear not to be trusted neither by the athletes-survivors, nor by their lawyers. As a lawyer dealing with cases of sexual abuse said in a Greek article, “…we must stop telling the victims to ‘talk’. ‘The victim will talk when the state really helps, both with welfare structures and with structures that suppress the perpetrators’” (Sayias, 2021). Chroni (2021b) characterized this call to athletes to speak up as premature, naïve, and a leap of faith, considering also how much is at stake for the athlete who risks losing the dream to excel once she breaks her loyalty toward her sport (see also Chroni, 2015). The system is outdated and is failing the athlete-survivors who seem to be punished anew when they cannot find justice after trying so hard to gather the courage and strength to speak up. As described in international articles, “No one will be criminally charged as the alleged offense took place too long ago” (Kottis, 2021); “Although the 20-year statute of limitations on rape has expired in her case, the government is considering extending it – though not retroactively” (Psaropoulos, 2021). No procedural change has been implemented in the 12 months since sexual violence in Greek sport took center-stage.

In a “home, a family” that is failing its “children,” building the courage to speak up can take time. Time is relevant and each victim-survivor heals in their own time; a fact difficult to grasp, for a public that is ignorant of the trauma caused by sexual violence and places blame on victimized women. As Sofia Bekatorou explains in an interview article:

Tsiganou (2021) in her research on how professionals tackle domestic violence in Greece, pointed out that judges’ interpretations of the law are influenced by dominant patriarchic stereotypes. Similarly, Lolis (2020) pointed out the high levels of patriarchal values in Greece, as male dominance and toxic masculinities are endorsed by the police. In the quotations below, a lawyer shares her view of a system that lacks protective mechanisms (Public Radio International, 2021), and Sofia Bekatorou elaborates on how the environment and conditions induce shame on a victim who dared to come forward (Sayias, 2021).

Humor or “disgusting comments … disguised as humor” that was mentioned above, has been found to be a masking tactic against gender-based violence (Cole, 2015; Lockyer and Savigny, 2020) but also a behavioral response of victims when attempting to confront their perpetrators (Fasting et al., 2007).

The past year reviewed here through media stories of sexually abused athletes in Greece, appears to have been filled with promises that did not translate into actions. “The Hellenic Olympic Committee and the government is urging other sex abuse victims to speak out” (Vassilopoulos, 2021) but reporting mechanisms that safeguard the athlete-survivor are still not in place. As Tiivas, the CEO of SafeSport International said in an international article, “whether the Greek ‘me too’ phenomenon Bekatorou triggered turns out to be a watershed moment or mere infotainment depends on how the government now tackles change” (Psaropoulos, 2021). While measures were announced, their implementation did not progress enough and as Stratigaki (2021) argued, the Greek government missed opportunities for legislative improvements in the area of combating gender-based violence. One of the measures announced by the Ministry of Sport in February 2021 was the development of codes of conduct by national sport federations. Whether codes of conduct were developed or not by the federations is yet to be monitored according to a recent interview by the Minister of Sport (Papadakis, 2022). Hence, the society, the system, the politicians, the law enforcers, the sportspeople appear to hold back on change and progress.

The keeping the home intact overarching theme was also grounded on individuals staying with their culture’s known that was built on two codes pertaining to how individuals attempt to protect the institution of family and how they fall back on the other strong institution of religion. Traditionally speaking, keeping a Greek home intact is a house-chore that was (and continues to be) within a woman’s caretaking gendered role (Costa, 2005). Here, while abused athletes feel the harm done onto them, they continue to protect the institution of family by keeping what they experienced quiet: “I kept it secret for many years. He was married with children and the reason I did not say so was because I respected his children and nothing else” (Agence France-Presse, 2021). “Rape in every sense. I was then 11 years old. I was in shock and instead of supporting me, they wanted to destroy me. It was very difficult. ‘I just did not want my family to go through it then’” said an athlete in her deposition (Naftermporiki, 2022). Perpetrators take advantage of this and construct themselves as “family men” whose children need to be protected. Adamopoulos upon being identified by Sofia Bekatorou as her abuser, called the authorities to help him safeguard his extended family, “I call on the state, institutions and the media to first respect my family, my children and grandchildren” (Vassilopoulos, 2021).

The societal pressure on the victim-survivor is immense and was addressed in a case presented by Chroni (2013a) where a parent confronted the football club’s president for inappropriate touching of young female players to which he responded, “What do you want now to happen? Ruin my family life?” This pressure to care for the abuser’s family, as shown in previous paragraph’s quotations aims to sensitize the victim-survivors on cultural values, which in Greece means showing respect (bowing) to the authorities along with showing solidarity and loyalty to the in-groups within which they were brought up, regardless of the costs. As such, when push comes to shove, care for the athlete is nowhere to be found. While international literature emphasizes holistic care for athlete well-being (Campbell et al., 2021), this is not the case for athletes in Greece.

When a victim’s physical family and sport-family do not provide the necessary protection to the athlete-survivor, either because she is protecting them by not speaking up or because she was disloyal and exposed her sport-family’s dirty laundry, some athletes turn for help to the other strong institution they know of, religion, “I was getting the medals and I could not be happy. For many years I said I had to speak [up]. Eventually I disappeared and went to a monastery for a short time and prayed, Devetzi said” (Agence France-Presse, 2021). However, the institution of Greek Orthodox religion is as patriarchic and collectivist as the society (Tsiganou, 2021), hence instead of peace of mind and healing, the abused athlete may find herself left shamed.

In sum, it appears that to keep the Greek sport home intact, the different ends (collective and individual) meet in cultural institutions and traditions, outdated premises and practices, and (un)conscious deafness and blindness, where they interact, reconstruct, and perpetuate cultural inequalities, discrimination, and abuse. The theme of keeping the home intact, denotes that the challenges of change are not confronted yet, and that power remains on the side that it was.

As an overarching theme, failed negotiations with power is about individual negotiations with glitches of Greece’s national and sport culture, along with collective acts that may well preserve power for those who have it. As negotiations with problematic aspects of the national culture we regarded situations where the individual athlete negotiates between caring for her emotional vulnerabilities and remaining silent, as well as when negotiating between remaining silent and not protecting herself or others in her sport from maltreatment and abuse. Negotiations involving the sport culture, place the individual at a juncture where she must choose between her own safety and well-being, and her Olympic dream (see Table 2).

Being caught between one’s emotional vulnerabilities as an athlete, like adoring your sport and wanting to stay with it, and remaining silent while harming yourself, was a common experience in the athletes’ stories in the media. As an athlete said, “We have been saying this [being abused] for years …but they did not take us seriously because they know how much we love [the sport]” (Hadoulis, 2021). Another athlete talked of being systematically raped and taking her more than 10 years to realize that a child cannot be blamed for being raped,

While the athlete-survivors of the study construct this negotiation as one they are responsible for, the literature suggests that victim shaming and blaming are common strategies used by perpetrators to weaken the targeted victim and to secure secrecy (Brackenridge, 2001; Sinnamon, 2017). The athlete-survivors’ quotes above illustrate how well these women have been primed, groomed in this culture of shaming and blaming that asks victims to take responsibility for the harm done onto them.

The negotiation between self-care in the form of speaking up and seeking justice and continuing with one’s elite sport dreams is a reality that researchers have pointed out for years (e.g., see Brackenridge, 1997, 2001; Chroni, 2015). As illustrated by Chroni and Kavoura (2022), Bekatorou could not speak up when losing the sport she loved and the Olympic dream were at stake. The cost of exposing the in-group of sport is high, and for one of our athletes it was the end of her career, “high-performance sport stopped the day I decided to talk about my rape. I knew my career would end somewhere there, not because I spoke up, but because I realized that it was important to give a different fight” (Tsilochristou, 2021). Greek athletes are afraid to talk, and “she had kept quiet over the alleged abuse until now out of fear that her career would be affected” (Squires, 2021). Loss might come as a punishment for breaking in-group loyalty from those in positions of power within sport but can also come as a protective measure from the female athlete’s family, “at that time we did not have any collaboration with a sports psychologist, and of course I would never talk to my parents because they would have stopped me from sailing” (Squires, 2021). In both cases, the athlete has to negotiate between losing her sport dream and breaking free from abuse, and those who speak up feel as if they can help, “I am trying to help where it is needed so that other women can have dreams” (Kottis, 2021).

While an in-group expects loyalty and solidarity from its members, there are times when staying silent as an act or loyalty to the sport may oppose to solidarity with group members that one also wants to protect. Remaining silent and not letting the public know about the abuse and abuser contradicts solidarity toward the children and youth members of the group who cannot be protect if information on the abuse and abuser were not shared publicly. Majority of the women who came forward, found the strength to speak up in order to protect the future generation. As another athlete said, “she decided to speak up to ‘preserve the health and safety’ of young athletes” (Public Radio International, 2021). The women saw more weight in protecting future generations from abuse than in wining gold, “To bring back a gold medal to your country …was great but it did not last long. ‘This change, I hope, will last and protect future generations’” (Kottis, 2021). These words also reveal how well-ingrained are collectivist values of family and the protection of its members at all costs. The women found strength to speak up in the thought of saving younger children and not of saving themselves, after all they are women who were primed as second-rate citizens of Greece (Lolis, 2020; Tsiganou, 2021).

The theme of preserving power was grounded on sexual abuse being about the exploitation of power relations and not about sex, and the corrupted management practices that run Greek sport as ways for supremacy, power, control, and authority to stay with those who possess them. In the data we reviewed, athletes shared how their naked bodies were exploited by persons of authority, “Mania Bikof, a retired water polo player said she had been forced to strip to the waist so a doctor could examine a shoulder injury, and the former swimming champion Rabea Iatridou, said she had been groped by a medic” (Kitsantonis, 2021). According to social theorists controlling a person’s body is one of the most effective ways to obtain control of the individual (Foucault, 1978, 1979; Bourdieu, 1986; Giddens, 1994), while in the majority of cases sexual harassment and abuse, like the ones we find within the Greek in-group of sport, are not about sex but control in asymmetrical power relations (Fasting and Brackenridge, 2009). The data also revealed that some Greek female athlete-survivors have come to understand that sexualized acts and/or sex are a means of exerting power in close relations where power and trust are abused (Chroni, 2013b), “‘My personal experience is not an individual issue that affects only me… It’s part of a wider and chronic problem regarding abuse of power in general but also particularly with the current [federation] leadership’” (Angelopoulou and Tsafos, 2021). And while persons of power can misuse it, athletes are expected to stay quiet (loyal to the group), “Male athletes have spoken out too, including Nikos Kaklamanakis, another sailing champion, who said that sailing federation officials threatened young athletes to stay quiet about alleged abuses” (Kitsantonis, 2021).

Greece ranks high on corruption and is often constructed as an untrustworthy state that needs help from European institutions to fight corruption and bribery through projects and awareness raising campaigns (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, n.d.). Corrupted management is also present in Greek sport and measures were undertaken by the ministry of sport aiming to improve sport federations and clubs’ governance (General Secretariat of Sport, 2021). Within our data, corrupted management was constructed as a framework that sustained abuse instead of safeguarding athletes,

As elaborated in the data, “Bekatorou… was among several top sailors who last year publicly accused the federation of mismanagement and creating a ‘toxic’ environment to bully and control athletes” (Vassilopoulos, 2021). In a corrupted sport environment, values, processes, and rules are most likely not in place and the mismanagement reported above allows for exerting control over athletes in any way possible even with violence.

In closing, it appears that in these failed negotiations with power, the collective and individual ends meet once again but this time on challenging grounds requiring them to negotiate between one’s well-being, integrity and social and sporting cultural aspects or how power is retained by authority structures and persons. The theme of failed negotiations with power, suggests that wrongdoings are not confronted, and that power remains on the side that it was. A key message here is that authority structures and persons in Greece remain protected at all costs.

In the present study, we engaged with cultural praxis (Ryba and Wright, 2005, 2010; Chroni and Kavoura, 2020) to explore how the cultural context in Greece operates as an underlying factor in priming athletes for harassment and abuse and in oppressing them from speaking up, asking for help, and advocating for safer sport. Specifically, our thematic analysis of media data revealed two overarching trends in relation to how the Greek sport context conditions athletes, namely, keeping the home intact and failed negotiations with power. Keeping the home intact is carried out through outdated and untrustworthy practices that teach women athletes blindfolded discipline, disempower them and discourage victim-survivors to speak up, while also failing to provide the sport context with improvements that can support women athletes in contesting maltreatment and exploitative behaviors, coming forward, and finding a pathway to healing. Failed negotiations with power involve individual athletes having to constantly negotiate with those who preserve the power (in this case, corrupted male federation officials and other men who abuse their positions of power), as well as with national- and sport-culture glitches. The decision whether to speak up about abuse and save future generation yet ruin their relationships with coaches and federation officials and therefore their athletic career, or to stay silent and continue the pursuit of their Olympic dream, is a difficult one to make. Their upbringing inside collectivism and the loyalty to family and its members (e.g., children) that is instilled in them appear to shape the drive to break their silence even without a safety net of proper reporting procedures.

The themes identified in this paper can be viewed as expressions of how collectivism and patriarchy are performed in everyday life (also outside the realm of sport). The outdated and abusive coaching, training practices reproduce and retain the supremacy of men in power. The untrustworthy, outdated system and practices preserve gender hierarchy and inequalities against women who are targeted by violence more than men and perpetuate traditional stereotypes through individual interpretations of laws performed by law enforcers. Promises on policy changes that do not happen, is an indirect way to keep things as they are and retain power and authority of men. The negotiations that athletes-survivors face are indications of a collectivist society that expects to remain “clean” of wrongdoings by hiding these (culture of silence) and a sport community that glorifies everything about men, male prowess, and male dominance. Lastly, the theme of preserving power is the ultimate illustration about how male authority is retained through wrongdoings, such as violence and corruption.

While this study is based on a rather small number of national and international articles, that concerned nine cases of sexual violence in Greek sport published between January 2021 and January 2022, it is crucial to note here the absence of research on sexual violence in Greece. The fact that since Chroni and Fasting (2009) collected data on female athletes’ experiences with sexual harassment no other study has been conducted may be a signal of how incidents of violence remain a taboo that Greeks do not expose and the challenge of conducting research on such sensitive topic. We could probably have identified more cases, from more sporting contexts, if we had broadened our search terms and/or the timeline but reaching saturation in codes found in the data assured us that we could go ahead with writing this manuscript. We firmly believe that our study provides important information about the cultural elements that delayed the arrival of the #metoo and continues to hold back change and progress with regard to combating sexual violence in Greek sport as well as other forms of violence, including physical and emotional violence. Our findings have important implications for understanding what lays behind the occurrence of sexual violence in the Greek sport context and victims-survivors being hesitant to come forward. In light of these findings, and if we want to safeguard athletes against sexual violence, such socio-cultural elements need to be brought to light and addressed within any policy and measures. For safeguarding and safe sport to succeed, the development and implementation of policy and measures must be grounded in the context in which violence occurs. To achieve this, cultural praxis could be used as a heuristic, and as a “how to” of combing localized research, with critical theory and actual praxis in the field (Chroni and Kavoura, 2020). As Fisher and Anders (2019) argued, tackling sexual violence in sport requires us to re-center efforts in exploring how power dynamics and hierarchies are integrated in specific cultural contexts, and in dismantling the cultural ideologies and politics that might be linked to exploitative behaviors, and in our case, also to resistance to change.

The findings presented here are in congruence with previous scholarly work (Lolis, 2020; Tsiganou, 2021) that links sexual abuse with persisting manifestations of patriarchy and collectivism, as these can be traced in the Greek climate of silence, the under-reporting, the defying of victim credibility, or the victim blaming and shaming. Socio-cultural nuances that lay behind the themes of keeping the home intact and failed negotiations with power, condition all involved for wrongful use of power, unreported misconduct of sexual nature and provide foundation to the walls of silence that surround sexual violence in Greek sport. Under current circumstances, it seems as if change is a threat to all involved, yet for different reasons. For the coaches, sport officials, stakeholders, and the state system, change would require them to relinquish male powers and authority, find new meaning of what it means to be and do as a man, and allow women to be seen as counterparts. For the female athlete-survivors, it would require them to prioritize the self and their self-care and let go of the in-group loyalty and subordination they learned to be and show since infancy.