Sports and Crime Briefing: Safeguarding

Why Was Kenya's U-15 Football Team Forced to Sleep Outside?

Sandra Anya — Sat, 20 Dec 2025 16:38:01 GMT

On the night of 10 December 2025, photographs spread rapidly across Kenyan social media showing the country’s U15 boys’ and girls’ football teams sleeping on tiled floors and benches inside St. Mary’s Kitende, a boarding school and host venue in Kampala, Uganda. The teams had just completed competition at the CAF African Schools Football Championship and were preparing to return to Nairobi when their scheduled buses failed to arrive.

Kenya’s U-15 football team sleeping outside a boarding school in Uganda. Source: Social media...

The missed departure created a legal quandary. Under Kenyan regulations, junior teams are prohibited from travelling at night. Once the transport delay pushed the departure time past the permitted window, the delegation could not legally travel ba…

"Children are Punished as Adults," Experts Warn of WADA’s Treatment of Minors

Chris Dalby — Thu, 11 Dec 2025 10:24:53 GMT

Anti-doping was not designed with children in mind. And yet the global system governed by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) routinely subjects minors, some as young as 8, to testing, disciplinary processes, and life-altering sanctions built for adults.

With the 2027 WADA Code moving toward removing parental consent for doping tests on children, longstanding concerns about child rights, due process, and safeguarding have taken on new urgency.

We're Launching Free 2 Play - The First Fact-Checking Platform Against Human Trafficking in Sport

Chris Dalby — Mon, 06 Oct 2025 12:48:38 GMT

For the last year, we’ve been covering human trafficking in football. Hundreds of players, mostly from Africa, but also from Latin America, Southeast Asia, and the Middle-East, are scammed and lured far away by corrupt agents and academies.

Don’t get it twisted, this is human trafficking, often of children. We’ve tracked it in Portugal, Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana, The Gambia, Cote d’Ivoire, Uzbekistan, Paraguay, Brazil, Cyprus, the USA, and beyond.

But we wanted to do more. Raising awareness wasn’t enough, most players, academies and clubs in Africa know this scam very well. So what did they need?

The problem is structural: When a vulnerable 17-year-old moves from an academy in West Africa to a low-tier club in Eastern Europe, no single governing body is going verify the legitimacy of the agent, the player’s age, the contract’s content, or the transfer’s actual financial flow.

If you wish to help Free 2 Play, join our Patreon for exclusive news on our human trafficking investigations, on how p…

Will Fan Uproar Stop NHL Teams from Signing "Hockey Canada 5"?

Chris Dalby — Fri, 26 Sep 2025 10:35:56 GMT

The National Hockey League is facing a firestorm over the impending return of five players acquitted of sexual assault in a high-profile case.

All five were members of Canada’s 2018 World Junior team, accused of sexually assaulting a woman after a Hockey Canada Foundation gala. Although they were declared not guilty in July, this has not quashed outrage from fans and even sponsors.

The Vegas Golden Knights and Carolina Hurricanes, rumored to be interested in two of the players, have already felt the heat. Vegas appeared to revoke a reporter’s credentials for asking about the case, while Hurricanes fans are threatening boycotts.

This brings up a topic that comes up again and again in American sports: how to reconcile a legal acquittal with a public that isn’t ready to forgive or forget.

The 5 Canadian hockey players were found not guilty of sexual assault, but are not finding it easy to return. Source: Reuters

Who are the Hockey Canada 5?

On June 18, 2018, Canada’s U20 World Juniors hockey…

Ending Exploitation: United Through Sports' Fight to Protect Youth Athletes

Chris Dalby — Wed, 17 Sep 2025 07:59:14 GMT

As CEO of United Through Sports (UTS), Julia Govinden leads the world’s largest all-inclusive youth sport organisation, across the Olympic, Paralympic, and Special Olympic movements and beyond.

Under the stewardship of the Alliance of Independent Recognised Members of Sport (AIMS), UTS hosts international multi-sports events and World Youth Festivals to promote tolerance, equality and non-discrimination for sport.

For example, in August in Colombia, UTS and the Special Olympics hosted the “No Barriers Cup” where 700 youth with and without disabilities from 10 municipalities competed in futsal, basketball, athletics, dance sports and more, side by side.

The Sports and Crime Briefing sat down with Govinden to discuss how UTS views integrity challenges across sport and what permanent changes are needed to fix them.

Govinden with a young athlete at the UTS Schools Program during the World Combat Games 2023 in Riyadh. Source: UTS.

Sports and Crime Briefing (SCB): UTS works across a range of s…