IWD: Nancy Hogshead-Makar, Rape Survivor & Fighter For An End To Abuse in Sport

After retiring from swimming, the Iowa native channelled her energy into helping others. After becoming a lawyer, she focused on campaigning for gender equality and combating sexual abuse in sport.

Nancy Hogshead at Duke in her student and swimmer days – Photo Courtesy: Champion Women

For decades, Hogshead-Makar did not talk publicly about the traumatic events that occurred in the autumn of 1981 when she was 19.

Who was to blame? “… while running alone…” reads the headline of a rape report – Chronicle screenshot from the Champion Women video

While out jogging outside the campus of Duke University in North Carolina, she was raped by a stranger.

“I felt profoundly broken. I felt forsaken by God. I was scared all the time,” said Hogshead-Makar, who suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder for months after the attack.

“I thought that I could overcome it by willing it away.”

Hogshead-Makar said she benefited from two things that many sexual assault victims don’t receive. She said:

“Number one, everybody around me believed that it happened. Number two, people believed in the depth of my emotional harm. Nobody told me, ‘Just get over it’.”

With help and support from loved ones, coaches, Duke faculty and administrators, she rebuilt her life but kept the attack private.

Former Olympic swimmer Nancy Hogshead-Makar has dedicated her life to gender equality while fighting sexual abuse in sport. She says:

“I didn’t talk about it for 20 years because I would have started to cry; I wasn’t quite healed enough.”

Eventually, a friend and mentor, the human rights activist Richard Lapchick, suggested that talking publicly about her experience as a rape survivor could be a way to help others. Hogshead-Makar recalls:

“He said, ‘You really need to start talking about your own experience’. And he was right. It made me a better advocate. My hope is that other, older women with great lives will disclose this part of their story.”

• Here is Nancy Hogshead recalling the traumatic events of her youth.

Harnessing Experience To Advocacy For A Safe Sports Environment

Nancy Hogshead Makar Photo Courtesy: Champion Women

In her efforts to foster change in Olympic sports in the United States, she’s drawing from her experience as an elite swimmer.

Hogshead-Makar believes that the nature of competitive swimming fosters equality:

“It’s no coincidence that some of the best gender equity advocates come from the sport of swimming because we see equality. I trained almost exclusively with guys. I was accustomed to having things be fair. We swam lap-for-lap and we lifted weight-for-weight.”

There have however been cases of questionable behavior.

One of Hogshead-Makar’s former coaches, Mitch Ivey, was suspended from the sport for life in 2013 after evidence emerged of improper sexual relationships with multiple swimmers he had coached. Says Hogshead-Makar, founder and CEO of the advocacy group Champion Women:

“The boundaries are just not well spelled out the way they are for counselors, religious leaders or lawyers or teachers,”

In 2012, the United States Olympic Committee ordered all its member federations to ban intimate relationships between coaches and athletes, regardless of age and consent.

Hogshead-Makar, however, says the message still needs to be reinforced. She estimates that only 0.5 percent of swimmers and 1.4 percent of their parents have received adequate training to safeguard against the problem.

To raise awareness on the issue, Hogshead-Makar is working on a social media campaign with Child USA, a non-profit which works to end child abuse and neglect in the United States.

She was also heavily involved in the effort to set up the US Center for SafeSport, the first independent organization to combat sexual and physical violence in Olympic sports, which launched in 2017.

Recent Swimming World coverage of recognition for the work of Nancy Hogshead-Makar and team and the difficult issues she calls on us all to face:

• In A Sea Of Plaudits For Bryant, Hogshead-Makar Issues Plea For More Men To Advocate For Women’s Safety In Sport
• Nancy Hogshead-Makar to Deliver Keynote Address at Albany Law School’s Stoneman Day
• Nancy Hogshead-Makar Receives the 2019 Play the Game Award For Safe Sport Advocacy