Sport Structured Brain Trauma is Child Abuse

This article first summarizes research regarding the relationship between sports that intentionally structure multiple types of brain trauma into their practice, such as rugby and boxing, and the range of negative health outcomes that flow from participation in such sports. After highlighting how these sports can permanently injure children, it examines this harm in relation to existing British laws and policies concerning child abuse. The conclusion drawn is that neither children nor adults on their behalf are legally able to give informed consent for participation, and that impact sport organizations effectively groom children into sustaining and accepting brain trauma. Adults providing brain-traumatizing versions of these sports are thus described as being complicit in a form of child abuse that we term brain abuse. Implications of the argument are that children should be prohibited from partaking in impact sports.