"Thanks to the freedom of speech in my book, shame turns into pride. It's the greatest victory, it's my Olympic gold medal. ” Like a promise to end omerta in sport, these words from figure skater Sarah Abitbol were greeted by a long standing ovation on Friday at the National Convention on Sexual Violence in Sport organized in Paris.
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Nearly four hundred representatives of the world of sport gathered in the hall of the French Olympic Committee to lay the first stone of a plan to combat sexual violence in sport.
Prevention, awareness, training…
After the shock investigation by Disclose on the cases of pedophilia in sport last December, after the publication of Un si long silence (Plon), where Sarah Abitbol accuses her ex-coach Gilles Beyer of having raped her when she was a teenager, the sports movement "is experiencing a major crisis" , recognized Denis Masseglia, president of the French National Olympic and Sports Committee. Roxana Maracineanu, the Minister of Sports, assured that her priority was to "ensure the safety and the physical and moral integrity" of children in the world of sport. The former swimming champion punctuated her speech with victims' testimonies : “ He said he was in love with me, but how can you love a 13-year-old girl? I was available, at his mercy all the time, it was several times a week. It was 5 minutes behind a door, in a car, still violently. "
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Prevention, awareness-raising, training… She unveiled the first tracks of the plan to combat sexual violence which will be presented in May. The minister is counting on the generalization of "good repute" for the 1.8 million educators and leaders, including volunteers engaged in federations and sports clubs. Today, only sports educators holding a professional card are subject to a systematic verification of their criminal record through the automated consultation of bulletin 2 of the criminal record and the automated judicial file of perpetrators of sexual or violent offenses .
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After the experimentation in Center-Val de Loire, these controls will first be extended to sports volunteers from the French Football Federation. "With two million licensees, that will give us a good indicator," said Roxana Maracineanu. "Please note, not all perpetrators of sexual violence are automatically entered in this file," warned Violaine Guérin, of the Stop sexual violence association: this registration is not compulsory for sentences of less than 5 years.
In all, the number of victims of sexual violence in sport could rise to 247,000 over the past forty years, estimated Patrick Karam, Inspector General of Youth and Sports, vice-president of the Regional Council of Île-de -France. An "unscientific" extrapolation made from a survey by the National Observatory on Delinquency and Criminal Responses over the period 2005-2011. As of Friday, a former figure skating coach from the Asnières-sur-Seine (Hauts-de-Seine) club was indicted and imprisoned for sexual assault and rape of three teenage girls while he was their coach.