sandra bullock. the mexican it film maker was acclaimed for the sky fi movie set on a space station. "american hustle" picked up best comedy, actress and best supporting actress. those are the headlines. >> i'm lisa fletcher and you are in the it stream. no question olympic hopefuls endure gruelling training. many say they are enduring psychological and sexual abuse at the hands of their coaches. we discuss the dark side of the road to the olympics.

>> our digital producer will bring in your questions. omar, that's a tendency to look at the olympic environment and think it's structured, disciplined and safe, and a number of athletes say it's anything but. >> a lot of thoughts about the relationship, what qualifies as abusive behaviour. jonathan says a coach's job is to maximise performance. jennifer says: >> of course, for those of you at home, we want you to be part

of the conversation. tweet in using the hash tag on the screen. >> going for gold comes with sacrifices. physical, psychological and sexual abuse are part of the equation. from speed scakating to judo athletes are coming forward. 19 speed skaters filed complaints, citing coaches hitting athletes, throwing chairs and bottles, and berating a skater for being fat. a few bodies, like swimming, stepped up and has zero tolerance. some wonder whether guidelines is enough. they say a winning at all cost is making it less likely for athletes to report abuse. >> katherine star, 2-time

olympian and president of star. and john little, an attorney who handles many sexual abuse cases and dr mitch abrahams, a sports psychologist working with high performance olympic athletes. >> coach's push athletes to try harder. they yell and put you through workouts. at what point does hard core tough coaching become abusive? >> one of the things about being an elite athlete is you excel on your own, and it's having a balanced relationship between your coach and yourself. if you are in a dynamic, they are pushing. then you have lost your - the equality this that relationship.

and then you create a dynamic that is dysfunctional, moving to the extremely abusive environment. >> talk about what the abusive environment is like for you? >> well, i mean for me the abuse was psychologically abusive, mentally abusive, and i had to deal with - my family, my father was an amazing man. he supported me as a swimmer. it was amazing. and to go to him with my - you know, like you're supposed to go to your personalities, with your pain and your hurt to help you through that, and you know to sort of have their way of helping you, don't quit. i have a letter i found from 30 years ago from my father specifically saying, "sorry for your sadness, but you need to learn to get along", he meant

well. there was not a vehicle, in a way, to express any of that hurt or psychological abuse and so you sort of stayed with the. and your peers, your - you know, 14-15-year-old team-mates are the ones that helped you through your struggled, because you were in the same place. >> sorry, finish, katherine. >> it's all good. >> john, you're an attorney, and you deal with a lot of elite athletes when they run into these situations. katherine made a good point. we are talking about kids. give me a sense of some of the more egregious psychological and physical abuse allegations that your clients brought to you? >> first of all katherine it said the best when she said that the coach - his ego, he shouldn't say, "i made you, i'm responsible for your success", the athlete is responsible, the

parents d.n.a. is a single-largest contributor. on that note i agree with her. i have seen instances with coaches, where they have locked athletes, underage athletes. it did not perform well, it jarred the door. athlete couldn't get out. i saw coach's abused, and you would think that environment would be safe. i've seen throwing things at kids. what you saw in the speed skating instances from last year where coaches from assaulting athletes. what happened with speed skating is the national government authority failed to act. what we have is olympic sports participating in sports is there's no accountability. you have an environment like katherine talked about, where

the coaches have no one to answer to. they can do what they will. as long as they are successful, there'll be no scrutiny to their methods. >> i want to get to that accountability and failure. i'm wondering did these abuses concentrate among a particular age or agenda? >> what is important is considering the developmental age of the athletes involved. they have a wide range of ages and developmental stages that they are going through. it would be a mistake to assume that a governing bod which would enforce the rules the way they would need to be done, and accountability falls on all participants. expecting athletes to come forward is unrealistic. governing bodies matter, but parents have to be involved in not just handing over children.

>> i agree with that, if i can jump in here a second. i agree that coach's or parents have responsibility. but the problem that we have currently this u.s. olympic sports which, for the record, is 42 sports from soccer to football to field hockey. what we have is a system where abuses and allegations are not documented, or if they are document they are kept from parents and clubs at the lower level so people don't know that the new man that moved into town and is the new coach or the thai cannedo program has a history from new jersey. those lifts are that are kept, preventing parents having the knowledge they need to make informed decisions about who is working with the children. >> we have questions in the community about where the line is drawn between what is

encouraging coaching and where it crosses into abuse. we have interesting responses: >> katherine given there's a subjective angle to emotional abuse, does it make it difficult to set standards about what behaviour coaches can engage in and what they cannot? >> i think you have to put the - you have to allow athletes to have a voice. i'm an advocate for if it feels wrong, it is wrong. an athlete has to say that, you know, i'm not okay with it. and, you know, there's no room nor that. if we have such a system especially in gymnastics where the next athlete stepping in line, and, you know, i feel like

one of the - so that's where you continue to abuse yourself and not feel like you can speak up. you'll not be accommodated. we live in fear and intimidation and change it to empowerment, allowing athletes to be vocal within who they are. allow them to share that part of their experience, and, you know, there's way too much power, and because they are minors, they are negated and not considered as having any value to the conversation, yet these are children who have excelled beyond belief and being in sports in general, participation. we want to teach athletes to communicate in a way that is helpful. >> was you know, it's disturbing and not uncommon for psychological abuse to lead to sexual abuse, which is more

likely in the athletes. find out why in the break. until then, keep tweeting us your thoughts.

>> we are back discussing the abuse some athletes face on their olympic journey. there's a greater prevalence of sexual abuse at the elite level. i asked you to give us some examples of physical and psychological. let's talk about some of the most agraj use sexual abuse. >> i've had, unfortunately, clients, underaged clients who purchased oral sex on coaches,

on international trips and trips to the olympic games , and athletes who have been raped, athletes who have been sexuality assaulted. and athletes in speed skating, abused by known predators, and in usa swimming several coaches who abused athletes across the globe. >> a lot of those coaches are still coaching. >> and nancy, a former olympic medallist in swimming and a director in advocacy and a women's center. nancy, can you think of one thing that john brought uppers and you'd think they'd make global headlines, yet we don't hear about the stories. why not? >> a couple of reasons, when something like this happens at a

school, there's legal liability. there is accountability. because you have the sport of regions overseeing them, it cost the school about $100 million. it happens in a club setting or an olympic sport setting. there's no civil rights cause of action. no way someone like john here will be reimbursed. schools are covered. if it happens in a school there's coverage. all the leaders have to take care. the insurance companies come in and put requirements on what schools have to do. not true with the olympics movement. there's no legal accountability. i disagree with what mitch said earlier. as soon as the sport does something about it, they have a

strong code of ethics. when they find someone violating that, whether it be emotional, sexual abuse, that they do something about it. it doesn't take many coaches to get banned before other coaches realise there are limits to what they can do. it doesn't necessarily make someone successful to abuse them, push them in a way that it is demeaning. >> what is it about the path of the high performance athletes that feeds into this type of abuse? >> the culture is win at all costs. then you'll have the problems pop up. we have felt that competition is overplayed and demanded at levels when athletes might be physically but not psychologically mature enough to

do it. psychologists wonder whether competition should get strict. in middle schoolkids have greater capacity to tolerate losing. in olympic sport they don't have the age requirements. you see all kinds of athletes struggling. the other thing i want to say is what i was saying earlier, to have governing bodies being a responsible party, my belief is that the olympics are the penultimate example of what it happening in sport. this is ubiquitous, happening in sports all over the place. if we want to change what is happening to the athletes, we have to change the culture and not expect it to happen at the olympic level. >> the culture, the problem with the culture in olympic sport is this is so engrained, the abuses before, they have gone on the young male athletes see how the

30s and 40-year-old coaches act towards their peers. they become coaches, and grow up in an environment where it is tolerated, where there'll be no repercussions if you sleep with a 14 or 15-year-old. when you have that environment it trickles down to usa swimming, all levels, u.s. olympic sport. we have to keep in mind that when we are talking about the olympic movement, we are talking about swim clubs all over the country, where kids are swimming and groomed by sexual predators by the time they are seven or eight years owl. >> we have the community weighing in on this:

>> we are talking not just about sexual overtures, but egregious forms. >> in terms of accountability a lot of governing bodies are handling the issues internally, acting as judge and jewellery, and move member status. how is it that they can do this and not have to report these things to law enforcement. >> well, they not mandatory reporters over the law. i want to take a step back and talk about sexual abuse in a broader sense. when you look at what sexual abuse is, it's an abuse of power. as been son-in-lawy, i cannot have a romantic or sexual

relationship with a client. physician, clergy members or councillors, there are rules that sports governing bodies are very, very reluctant to adopt. it took the united states olympic committee to go and tell the national governing bodies to change the code of conduct, that prohibited the conduct. if the 18-year-old can do it, the 16-year-old wants to do it. if we want to clean it up, you know, we have to figure out a way of getting molesting coaches who are abusing athletes. the same way in the military and schools are going through it now. and in lots of other areas. it is calling out for what it is and getting abusers out of the system. >> i want to get back to you about the idea of governing bodies operating outside the law. i want to bring you in here. talk a little about the power

dynamic that nancy referenced. did you experience anything like that with the coaches, where it was clear that that was something they wanted to keep in play? >> you know, in my particular case, my coach was the head olympic coach, and so, you know, he was the selector of the team. so for me i had to - if i wasn't doing as he wanted me to do, which i was saying no, after he raped me, and, you know, continuing to say no, i was not selected for the world championships or the commonwealth games or the european championships. >> and that was puppishment. >> absolutely. the only reason i went to the championships is because another reporter was going to do something about it. and the irpy was i met the -- irony was i met the pope and the

only reason i stood in his preps was to hide and suppress my own abuse in 1983. the management leadership, anywhere, the leadership of the united states olympic community did not live up to the olympianism of what it is they were supposed to do. they failed their athletes and the system. unless we have a mandatory policies in place and enforcement mechanism, not just for the 3.2 million athletes that is listed, but for the 60 million who are most at risk. then these things will continue to advance. it's not just me, there'll be millions of mes. that's - there's too many. you mentioned why don't we share the stories? there's too many much them. these are not isolated

incidents, when it's too many, it's normalized and accepted as the cost of doing business. there is no reason for it to be there, none whatsoever. and, you know, we need to step in and change for a knew generation, to help them have a voice, be the athletes that they can aspire to be without this in mare way. >> nancy, we'll hit a break. quickly i want to get back to you on the idea of how the governing bodies act independently and keep most of this information internal. . >> coaches know each other, and elite coaches. it's difficult to go after them. my olympic coach was banned for life, and they had the information on how it was they were having relationships with underaged girls, and they wouldn't do anything about it. it wasn't until congress got

involved and all praises to george miller for putting a spotlight on the issue and making the bodies accountable. and having them clean up their act. the women's sports foundation, my organization is working with the committee to create a separate entitiee to investigate coaches. >> you touched on it, how can coaches and governing bodies be held accountable without jeopardizing what the athletes spent their lives achieving. we'll look at that and solutions after the break.

welcome back. we have been talking about the alarming number of allegations of physical, psychological, and sexual abuse of olympic hopefuls at the hands of their coaches. john, we have been talking about lack of accountability. i'm curious how have institutions responded to your legal actions? >> the institutions have responded by denial, blaming the victims, by enriching their own

pockets in terms of legal fees and a corrupt insurance system. if usa swimming and the olympic committee is serious about taking a step in the right direction, the usa swimming has kept a list of child molesters, and i have never seen that list. i think they should disclose the known child molesters in their midst and do something about them. but until congress intervenes, nothing will happen. >> i think that's mind numbing. it seems like such a no-brainer. >> you would think so, but as nancy said this is a world where these guys are traveling around the world together, nobody wants to lose their seat at the world's greatest country club which is what the olympic movement is, and until you have congress come in and say you

have to clean this up -- we're talking about molest children. if you have molested kids -- for example the former president of the united states speed skating molested two kids, admitted it to, in may we tried to get a resolution passed and if you have been convicted of child molestation or confessed to it, you should no long be a member of usspeed skating, and we were unsuccessful. >> unbeliefable. >> we have some community input . . . katherine, i know that your organizationhas an app out there that helps people report anonymous anonymously. how important is this?

>> oh, it's huge. we have a comprehensive policy and program, and our structure is what is key. so our app on top of it speaks to the millennium generation who -- you know, they walk around with smartphones, so we made it anonymous, and we have resources right there. we have the education behavior right there for the athletes to have access to, and, you know, we're -- we're speaking to the generation, and in technology the way -- with our partner, and so we speak in their language in a way for them to communicate. >> and athletes can go to your website for more information. that is all the time we have tonight. thanks to all of our guests. we'll see you ne next time. ♪

>> c >> this is al jazeera america. i'm thomas drayton in new york with a look at the top stories. >> iran and six world powers agreed on the process to role back the nuclear program. the first steps begin on january 20th. iran will allow the united nations full access to nuclear facilities. the senate is scheduled to vote on a bill monday extending unemployment benefits through much of this year. the $18 billion extension is needed. republicans say the government should focus on creating jobs. >> target and neiman marcus may not be the only retailers whose