The Rugby Football Union’s safeguarding team dealt with 141 cases involving adults and children in the 2015-16 season in England, with some involving “serious, harmful sexual behaviour”.
The RFU did not put a number on the incidents involving sexual behaviour, saying they were very small and that the police had been called in. Most of the cases involved poor practice, such as bullying and bad language.
The revelation, which was made at a meeting of the RFU’s council in October by the union’s safeguarding team, which used the words serious, harmful sexual behaviour, comes at a time when football is dealing with a growing number of historic cases of sexual abuse.
Ian Ritchie, the RFU’s chief executive, said on Tuesday that no one had come forward in the light of the revelations made in football to make a case of historic abuse, but it is the present that is concerning Twickenham, which last season made 13,725 Disclosure and Barring Service checks.
“The RFU is committed to safeguarding the welfare of children in rugby and has an experienced in-house safeguarding team,” a spokesperson said. “We have worked closely with the Child Protection in Sport Unit and NSPCC to develop robust policy and procedures to safeguard children, achieving national advanced standards in both for safeguarding and protecting children in sport.
“We work closely with all our clubs and statutory agencies to ensure that safeguarding children is prioritised. Any allegation, suspicion of harm or concern is taken seriously and responded to swiftly, fairly and appropriately. Our expert and experienced safeguarding team [which contains former policemen] has a very broad remit, covering 2,000 clubs, approximately 100,000 volunteers and around 500,000 children from under‑six to under-18 who participate in rugby.
“The issues and incidents they deal with, which fall into our definition of safeguarding, for example include foul and abusive language, allegations around peer on peer bullying, and physical assault allegations. Typically, we deal with around 140 incidents per year, of which a very small number relate to allegations concerning sexual incidents within rugby.”
The RFU has 900 safeguarding officers and Ritchie said that it has put processes in place to ensure that complaints are dealt with immediately. “The scale in football is shocking because every offence of this kind is distressing and distasteful, something you need to discourage,” he said. “It comes down to openness and accessibility and we have we got a system and process that is open for people bringing their concerns to us, as we should. I hope nobody would be discouraged from bringing those forward – quite the opposite – then we will deal with them in the appropriate, professional manner.”
Ritchie added there has been increased vigilance since the football revelations. “It is the classic what don’t you know over a 30-year period. We have been looking whether there is anything there but nothing has come up that I have been made aware of, or historical incidents that have not been investigated. It is a societal thing. You do as much as you can to prevent it happening and we are rigorous if we know something is happening to make sure it is investigated fully and that primarily moves into a matter for the police. We pass everything on we have.”
