Kristyna Janku picked up her phone to a police officer’s call, bracing for news she could hardly fathom. Rumors had swirled about her former coach, Petr Vlachovsky—once hailed as the Czech Republic’s top women’s football coach—but the reality felt ripped from a horror script. “A police officer called me and told me what had been happening and said that I needed to come to a police station,” Janku recounts of the 2023 revelation. “When I got there I had to look at tapes, records, pictures, conversations he’d had online, and more. The police needed us to identify ourselves. Of course, we were shocked and couldn’t believe it was really happening, that it was for real, because it was like something you only see in films.”
Vlachovsky had covertly recorded FC Slovacko players in their changing room over four years, amassing footage that included child sexual abuse material. For Janku, the betrayal cut deep. “I couldn’t believe it had been going on for such a long time,” she says. “He was our coach for a long time, we had a good relationship with him, he was a person you could trust.” Yet, justice proved elusive. Last May, Vlachovsky received a one-year suspended sentence, a fine, and a five-year ban from Czech football activities—but with his federation membership lapsed, no further sporting sanctions followed. The Czech FA has not filed a complaint with FIFA’s ethics committee, leaving Vlachovsky free to coach abroad, including in Poland where Janku now plays. “I don’t even want to think about it,” she admits. “It’s really crazy.”
This case is far from isolated. In February, an Austrian man received a seven-month suspended sentence and a €1,200 fine for secretly filming the Altach women’s team, with victims awarded €625 each. Alex Phillips, secretary general of global players’ union Fifpro, warns such incidents represent “the tip of the iceberg.” “The majority of people don’t speak up, cases don’t go anywhere, players don’t know where they can report to or they don’t trust where they can report these cases,” Phillips states, highlighting a systemic failure in football’s safeguarding mechanisms.
Janku’s psychological scars linger, altering her daily routines. “I look at some situations differently, with coaches or members of staff, and I’m more careful about some conversations. I can no longer take some jokes as just jokes too,” she explains. While she hasn’t sought therapy, describing herself as “one of the luckier girls,” new habits persist. “You can’t shake this new bad habit of always looking around,” the 31-year-old says. “I’m more careful and hide more when I’m changing before games and after games. I make sure that doors are closed. More widely I’m more careful too. For example, when I go to a public pool it’s not like it was before, I try to not expose myself too much even when I’m in a private cubicle.”
Other victims faced harsher consequences: vomiting, club changes, and irreversible trauma. Alex Culvin, Fifpro’s director of women’s football, condemns the downplaying of noncontact abuse. “The inaction from the governing bodies and the perceptions around severity – where people are like: ‘Well, they haven’t been raped so is it is it actually that bad?’ – are harmful,” Culvin asserts. “One of the players spoke about having some degree of body dysmorphia now as a result of this case, when a player’s body is their whole economy; that’s how they generate income.”
Janku channels her anguish into advocacy, seeing a chance for change. “I see the chance for change,” she says, noting all Vlachovsky’s victims deem his punishment too lenient. “It’s a joke because that experience will stay with us for a lifetime. A lot of things have changed in our lives or in our careers as a result of this. It was never about money or anything like that – as female footballers it’s never about money for us – but we didn’t and don’t feel OK with the fact that he can come back to coaching. Even now he can coach abroad and he can coach kids, young girls.”
Phillips calls for structural reforms, emphasizing that while education efforts have increased, investigations remain flawed. “In the case of investigations and sanctions, what is needed is a funded international entity that is independent of the sports governing bodies,” he argues. He points to a broader apathy: “They also have no interest in doing much about it because there’s no obvious gain. At least that’s how it appears.” Historical cases in Haiti, Gabon, and Afghanistan only surfaced via journalist and union efforts, despite federations having prior knowledge. “All the big abuse cases in football – Haiti, Gabon, Afghanistan – only came out because journalists, sometimes with unions, brought the stories into the public eye, even though the federations already had the information,” Phillips notes.
Culvin draws parallels to the Me Too movement, stressing the need to believe players, especially those without platforms. “It was like: believe women. There’s an element of deprioritisation of women’s players, especially the ones who are deemed less valuable, not the top players or the players who’ve got an actual platform. They are vulnerable. They’re not believed,” she says. Referencing Spain’s Luis Rubiales scandal, she adds, “Players were speaking to issues for years, saying: ‘Our coach made us leave our hotel doors unlocked and removed our mobile phones’ – and it’s not treated as a big issue until someone gets sexually abused live on TV. So, just believe players. That is the fundamental backstop of all of these examples. It starts and ends with that.”
The Czech case underscores a global crisis: lightweight penalties, federation inaction, and a culture of disbelief. With Vlachovsky’s victims advocating for stricter bans and independent oversight, football’s governing bodies face mounting pressure to prioritize athlete safety over bureaucratic inertia.
