Her voice is still filled with immense emotion. Claudine Emonet thought that freeing up her speech, denouncing after forty years of heavy silence the attacks she suffered from her coach when she was in the French Alpine ski team, was going to… free her up. "It's so complicated," she breathes, "two days after having confided for a long time. It brews a lot. "
The word is chosen, it describes his inner torments. This storm that escorts her when she expected relief, positive energy. This suffering has nothing to do with that suffered in the early 1980s, of course. But it is very real and recalls how difficult it is to speak, speaking is only one step in the slow reconstruction.
"I felt guilty for speaking"
“My family, my husband, my two children are a very precious help, confides Claudine Emonet, while the French Federation, via Michel Vion, its president, called her to assure her of all her support and that she also issued a press release to that effect. All the messages I receive do me good too. That of Jean-Claude Killy touched me a lot. He told me that shame changed sides. "
These words, the 58-year-old former skier, now an instructor in Chamonix, has a visceral need to hear them, to read them. "Yes, it may sound crazy, but I felt guilty for speaking. Again this guilt screed ... "It marks a long silence, barely disturbed by the gusts that we guess at the edge of the ski slope where she stopped to call us ...
Claudine Emonet repeats: "the guilt screed ..." The one who confined her, she and so many other victims, in the unspoken. That is why she wanted to remind us. “Since we talked to each other on Saturday evening, a lot has come back in snippets. It's difficult. When I read the post of Catherine Gonseth (her former teammate who was the first to report on Facebook a few days ago the sexual assaults of the same trainer, when she was a minor), when I read other testimonies in d 'other sports including that of Sarah Abitbol the former skater, I had successive clicks, she rewinds to explain. I started writing, I had a physical feeling going up in me, like a dragon spitting fire. I had an almost animal need to speak. But, buried deep within them, the words come out with difficulty. Almost in waves. This is also why she is speaking again on Monday.
"He threatened me"
“Yes, I would like to say that with Catherine (Gonseth) we are not the only victims (of this now retired coach). I know other girls have suffered. I understand that they find it difficult to speak, but I encourage them. It is important. To some, he made advances. They must know that this too is prohibited. Whatever they say and think about them, they are assaults. It's just unacceptable. He tried things. He didn't have to do it. They should not minimize. At the time, they had the strength to refuse his advances, to resist him. I encourage them to have the strength to speak today. "
Claudine Emonet is still blowing. Resumes a breath, like an armful of courage. "I did not have the courage to oppose at the time," she says. I was quite shy. He took advantage of this weakness. It was easy to get hold of me. And today I realize that I really feared it. Then, like a cry from the heart, this last confession, about a man from whom she expects nothing today, an attacker that in "the ski world everyone has recognized", she lets go: "He knew he was bullshit. He threatened me. ” It took him forty years to have the strength to denounce, Claudine Emonet now wants to fight. For her and for all the other victims.
