Kristyna Janku picked up the phone to a police officer in 2023, bracing for news she couldn’t predict. Rumors had swirled about her former coach, Petr Vlachovsky—once hailed as the Czech Republic’s best women’s football coach after nearly 15 years at FC Slovacko. Now arrested, the truth unfolded in a police station. “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. “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 secretly filmed Slovacko players in their changing room for four years. Authorities also found him in possession of child sexual abuse content. Last May, he received a one-year suspended sentence, a fine, and a five-year ban from all football-related activity in the Czech Republic. Yet, the Czech FA hasn’t filed a complaint with FIFA’s ethics committee, which could impose a worldwide ban. Vlachovsky’s membership had lapsed by the time criminal proceedings began, stalling federation punishment. Janku, now playing in Poland, faces the chilling possibility of him coaching against her. “I don’t even want to think about it,” she says. “It’s really crazy.”
This case isn’t isolated. In February, an Austrian man got a seven-month suspended sentence and a €1,200 fine for secretly filming the Altach women’s team in changing rooms, gyms, and showers. He was ordered to pay each victim €625 in compensation. Alex Phillips, secretary general of global players’ union Fifpro, calls Vlachovsky’s story “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,” he states.
Janku’s trust shattered overnight. “I couldn’t believe it had been going on for such a long time,” she admits. “He was our coach for a long time, we had a good relationship with him, he was a person you could trust.” The psychological toll is profound. She hasn’t needed therapy from the Czech players’ union, calling herself “one of the luckier girls,” but now scans every dressing room for hidden cameras. “You can’t shake this new bad habit of always looking around,” the 31-year-old explains. “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 weren’t as resilient. Some experienced vomiting, changed clubs, or can’t return to the sport. Alex Culvin, Fifpro’s director of women’s football, highlights the damage of inaction. “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,” she says. “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 trauma into advocacy. “I see the chance for change,” she asserts, 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 points to systemic flaws. Education and prevention efforts are rising, but investigations and sanctions lag. “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. Sexual abuse often gets deprioritized, especially in women’s football. “They also have no interest in doing much about it because there’s no obvious gain,” Phillips adds. “At least that’s how it appears.”
History shows federations rarely act without external pressure. “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. “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 cites Spain’s Luis Rubiales scandal as a wake-up call. “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.”
Janku’s vigilance extends beyond the pitch. “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. I maybe analyse situations a little bit more, but I didn’t and don’t want to let it have an impact on the trust I have for any coach or any man.” Her story underscores a brutal truth: noncontact sexual abuse leaves scars that reshape careers and lives. As football grapples with safeguarding, players demand action—not just words.
