Chance of the calendar, Amélie Quéguiner is summoned to the Criminal Court of Périgueux (Dordogne) on April 28, the day on which, after four weeks of electronic voting of the clubs, the name of the president of the French Equestrian Federation will be known. - Serge Lecomte the outgoing, in office for sixteen years, or Anne de Sainte Marie.
Several months ago, in the midst of a wave of freedom of speech, the former rider now breeder had filed a complaint against three former educators for acts of rape which would have taken place in the 1980s and now prescribed.
Amélie Quéguiner is now targeted in turn by two defamation complaints, from Serge Lecomte, the current president of the FFE, and by the FFE itself.
Determined to break the omerta in sport, the former rider did not hesitate to speak in the media and through an open letter.
His remarks were not to the taste of the senior federal leader, who has been singled out several times.
Amélie Quéguiner evokes in particular "a culture of indecent and retrograde rape", speaks of "cases hushed up by the Federation" and returns to the case Loïc Caudal, this former educator at the equestrian center of Suresnes (Hauts-de-Seine) found guilty of sexual assault on a minor in 2013 then sexual assault on three minors in 2017.
READ ALSO>
Sexual violence in sport: 387 reports received by the ministry
The man had been sentenced to three months then a year of suspended sentence and had been dismissed from his club (directed by Serge Lecomte) in 2014. Mediapart had revealed that he had then been employed by the FFE until 2019 as driver of advertising vehicles and signage installer.
"A person capable of protecting a pedophile and of keeping him in office knowing that he risks putting him in a situation of recidivism has nothing to do at the head of a sports federation", had launched the ex-rider.
"The Caudal affair" was invited several times in the campaign for the presidency, Serge Lecomte evoking it on several occasions during his meetings with the clubs.
"The Federation is a model in the way of treating sexual violence, some use it to try to break, he explained in particular during a meeting.
They took the opportunity to get me out of an old case that is not sexual violence.
This case has been tried, the Federation is not there to carry out the second trial of a person who has already been tried […].
It is a deliberate will to use this towards me to harm me.
"Believing to be defamed, Serge Lecomte and the Federation claim 1 symbolic euro for damages.
"You give riding a retrograde image"
Candidate for election to the presidency, Anne de Sainte Marie lambasted the position of her opponent.
"By associating the federation with your personal struggle, you are undermining the credibility of its actions in the fight against violence," she wrote in a press release.
You show the image of an intimidating federation for victims who have found the resources and the courage to speak out.
This amounts to denying them and reducing to final silence all those who might be tempted to speak in turn.
[…] You damage clubs by being the first of the 115 sports federations to sue a victim.
You give riding a backward and backward looking image.
[…] I therefore ask you, for the honor of horsemanship, to withdraw the complaint lodged on behalf of the Federation and to assume alone the process that you have chosen to initiate.
"