STAMPing out child sexual abuse in football: A systems thinking approach for safeguarding in football

Child sexual abuse (CSA) in sport remains a focal issue within Australia's national safeguarding agenda, prompting calls for more comprehensive, system-oriented prevention strategies. Football, the most widely participated organised sport among Australian children and adolescents, offers a representative context for examining CSA prevention and management across diverse communities and governance structures. The aim of this study was to understand the control structure of the current safeguarding system in football in Australia using the Systems Theoretic Accident Model and Processes (STAMP). A STAMP control structure was developed through a multi-phase validation process. Nineteen subject-matter experts (14 females, 5 males; mean age = 46.1, SD = 10.8) with an average of 5.8 years ( SD = 7.6) in their current safeguarding roles and a further average 10 years ( SD = 10.8) of related experience, recruited through targeted sampling across multiple levels of the safeguarding system, participated in the study. The resulting control structure model included 161 actors and organisations across 7 hierarchical levels of the broader sports system, 120 control mechanisms, and 94 feedback mechanisms across six hierarchical levels. The STAMP control structure supports a systems-thinking understanding of risk propagation and highlights how structural vulnerabilities and control mechanisms can contribute to safeguarding inadequacies. The developed control structure enables the identification of structural vulnerabilities, supports the detection of leading indicators of CSA, and informs systemic safeguarding reform. By integrating actionable feedback, the model promotes adaptive learning and a shift from compliance-driven reporting to proactive, system-wide responsiveness.