Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what estimate the Government has made of the number of children sexually abused by sports coaches in each year for which information is available.

My department does not collect information about the prevalence of child sexual abuse in sport. Child sexual abuse investigations and statistics are managed by the police.

The latest figures from Operation Hydrant, which coordinates non-recent child sexual abuse and exploitation investigations concerning institutional settings, show 329 sport institutions as being on the Operation Hydrant database up to and including 30 September 2018.

Operation Hydrant has also published separate statistics relating to non-recent child sexual abuse in football, up to and including 29 March 2018. These show that, at the time of publication, there were 849 alleged victims and 300 alleged suspects of non-recent child sexual abuse in football. These figures do not show in which years the alleged abuse took place, nor the relationship between the alleged perpetrator and victim. Since March 2018, football-related statistics have been captured in the Operation’s broader quarterly statistics.

Ensuring that sport is a safe environment for all young people is one of my top priorities, and my department works closely with Sport England and the Child Protection in Sport Unit to strengthen provision wherever possible. To support these efforts, I am committed to working closely with the Ministry of Justice to extend the definition of a ‘position of trust’ in the Sexual Offences Act 2003 to include sports coaches who hold a position of trust in relation to a child aged 16 or 17 under their care.