Crossing the line: blurred boundaries and sexual violence in coach-athlete relationships

Recent abuse scandals have intensified attention on sexual violence in youth sport, yet limited research has examined how athletes interpret boundary-crossing behaviours embedded within everyday coach–athlete relationships. This study explored how Spanish school-aged team-sport athletes perceived behaviours that may constitute sexual violence and how survivors retrospectively made sense of these experiences. A mixed-methods design was employed. First, 292 university student-athletes completed an online questionnaire assessing perceptions and experiences of 24 coach behaviours, ranging from routine interactions to explicit sexual propositions. Second, in-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with six survivors who experienced sexual violence in organised team sport before the age of 18. Quantitative findings showed that participants clearly identified overtly sexualised behaviours, such as proposing sexual relations in exchange for privileges, as sexual violence, while frequently occurring day-to-day behaviours were widely reported but rarely perceived as problematic. Qualitative findings revealed that many of these normalised practices formed part of grooming processes in which apparently caring, friendly, or performance-related actions progressively escalated into invasive and abusive conduct. By integrating athletes’ perceptions with survivors’ narratives, the study illuminates the grey zone of sexual violence in sport, highlighting how power relations and cultural norms render certain behaviours invisible in survey data yet recognisable as abusive within lived experiences.