Abstract: While the issue of violence against children in sport reached societal concern worldwide, valid measurement tools are lacking. This study aims to evaluate the psychometric properties of the Dutch Violence Towards Athletes Questionnaire (VTAQ), a self-report instrument, surveying experiences with violence in youth sport. A total of 769 Belgian young athletes were recruited for this study. Exploratory structural equation modeling (ESEM) showed excellent model fits and yielded the same latent factors in the athlete and parent subscales as in the original study. However, our analysis revealed an additional factor in the coach subscale, . This factor, consisting of both physical and psychological harmful behaviors relating to performance-enhancing purposes, was named 'instrumental' violence. The emergence of an extra dimension of sport specific interpersonal violence redirects us towards a more extensive study of instrumental types of violence in relation to sports culture, competition level and training load in young athletes.