The ugly truth about abuse in professional sports feat. Erin Willson

It sometimes seems hard to believe that professional athletes, like Olympians would ever experience any negative treatment let alone full on abusive treatment, but unfortunately it is a harsh reality for many of them. We are joined by the wonderful Erin Willson, currently a UofT PhD candidate and formerly a professional artistic swimming athlete from the 2012 Canadian Olympic team to discuss the serious issue of psychological abuse in professional sports. Erin is studying abuse in sport and its prevention, an area that she became interested in, particularly emotional abuse as this is what she experienced while on a National team. Erin talks to us about how psychological abuse is normalized and accepted in sports and often flies under the radar as it is not a criminal offence, like sexual or physical abuse. However, it is equally damaging and causes serious trauma and lasting negative effects to many athletes, which is why it needs to be talked about, banned from sports and the abusers need to be held accountable and face harsher consequences. Erin opens our eyes to a dark side of sports we had no idea about. At the top of the show we get dish on some celeb gossip, i.e. Free Britney (duh) and Elon Musks distasteful publicity stunt as well as Lauren shares how she really feels about a federal Covid policy. It’s a juicy one!!!

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