'Alleged Harassment Victims Not Protected Enough'

About half of the national-level sports organisations included in a study by the Equal Opportunities Commission have failed to state clearly that alleged victims of sexual harassment would not be punished for coming forward.

In its survey, the watchdog said that national-level sports organisations have stepped up their efforts to prevent sexual harassment overall, but some of them still lack policies or codes of conduct.

The watchdog checked the websites of 79 National Sports Association (NSA) organisations to see whether they had uploaded the relevant policies or guidelines by October last year.

It found that all but eight groups have any such policies or guidelines. Those eight are private sports groups not funded by the government.

Forty-one of the NSA organisations included in the study made it clear that people would not be penalised "for complaining in good faith", while just 27 groups included all the 11 essential items listed by the EOC in their anti-harassment policies.

Kitty Lam, the commission’s chief policy, research and training officer, admitted that its study did not cover a large number of district-level sports groups, which may not have the resources to formulate anti-sexual harassment policies.

“According to our experience in trying to encourage people in other sectors to formulate anti-sexual harassment policy or to enhance the awareness of sexual harassment in a particular sector, our experience is we have to first contact, and raise the awareness of the top level of people first. And then after we have convinced those on the top level of that sector, then they would help us to push the policy to their affiliations.

“Almost all other sports organisations are under different NSAs, so after the NSAs have implemented and formulated an anti-sexual harassment policy, they will be able to have the experience and knowledge to encourage and help those other affiliated clubs to adopt a similar policy, because you can imagine that district sports organisations or other organisations may not have the resource, the people to formulate such a policy,” Lam said.

The watchdog has urged the sports groups to assign a staff member to specifically deal with sexual harassment issues, provide training to staff, and help their affiliated organisations in carrying out anti-sexual harassment policies.

Still, the EOC described the overall result as encouraging, saying the number of sports organisations that had implemented policies to tackle sexual harassment more than doubled – from 28 – since its last survey in 2018.

The commission also said it'd set up a new hotline to handle enquires about sexual harassment.

It said the hotline is aimed at offering advice to suspected victims on how to handle their cases as well as to employers, but it will not deal with complaints.

Concerns have been raised about sexual harassment in the sports sector after prominent hurdler Vera Lui joined in calls from the global MeToo movement in 2017, accusing a coach of having sexually assaulted her when she was a teenager.

A man was later being prosecuted for indecent assault and was acquitted of the offence in 2018.