French sport has been rocked by a sex-abuse scandal in which seven swimmers and several skaters, including former national champions, are among those alleging that they were abused by their coaches in the late 1970s and 1980s.
L’Equipe, the leading French sports newspaper, today publishes the allegations and recollections of the former athletes.
The reports prompted Roxana Maracineanu, the 1998 World 200m backstroke champion who is now Minister of Sports for France, to denounce the omertà (group, agreed silence) on the subject of sexual abuse in French sport.
In swimming, Élisabeth Douet, Frédérique Weber and Isabelle Chaussalet are among seven former athletes who claim to have suffered sex abuse at the hands of coach Christophe Millet at the Font Romeu altitude training centre in the Pyrenees in the 1980s.
“It happened in the sauna,” explains one of the swimmers as she accuses her coach. She was just 13 when she says the coach removed his towel “to expose his erection and say ‘Have you ever seen a naked man?’.”
Millet denies any wrongdoing but L’Equipe reports that he continued to work at the Canet 66 swim club, the host of the Canet round of the Mare Nostrum tour, and in a managerial capacity at a nearby school while serving a suspended sentence of two and half years in 1993.
The cases are not yet bound for court but the athletes accusing their coaches rallied together and decided to make their allegations in order to encourage others to “take courage and report their case to the courts”.
L’Equipe’s investigation focuses on how difficult it was for victims and their families to report and then discuss the details of their allegations in “an environment where performance is king”.
Sarah Abitbol, ten times French champion in pairs figure skating, a multi-medallist at European Championships and Worlds bronze medallist in pairs in 2000, accused her coach Gilles Beyer of raping her several times between 1990 and 1992 when she was just 15 to 17 years old. National champion between 1994 and 2003, Abitbol writes in her new book “d’Un si long silence” to be released tomorrow:
“At 15, I slept (lived) away from home, I was vulnerable, and you (to her coach) took advantage of it. Even today, as soon as I leave the house, I am afraid. I hate going to places I don’t know. The unknown is necessarily synonymous with danger. I cannot travel alone. Driving a car without someone by my side has long been impossible. Flying is torture.”
Also in skating, Hélène Godard, Béatrice Dumur and Anne Bruneteaux accused Didier Gailhaguet, Jean-Roland Racle and Gilles Beyer of abusing them sexually in the late 1970s.
Godard tells L’Equipe that Beyer had intercourse with her when she was 13 and 14; Dumur and Bruneteaux also accuse coach Michael Lotz of abusing them in the 1980s when they were 13 years old.
The coaches have either denied the allegations or have yet to respond to questions from L’Equipe.
In the wider context of #MeToo, French sport is just starting to join the chorus as abuse cases come to light.
At the end of 2019, a survey by Report We journalists revealed a crisis at federation, club and local levels in French sport, with 77 alleged abuse cases in play involving at least 276 victims, mostly children under 15 years and from 28 different sports.
Omertà must end – Maracineanu
Roxana Maracineanu in full flow as Sports Minister of France – Photo Courtesy: Roxana Maracineanu Facebook
Sports Minister Roxana Maracineanu, welcomed a “necessary and salutary” investigation.
Historic files would now be opened. According to L’Equipe, Gilles Beyer continued his career as director teams of France and national coach and then of the Paris Flying Club despite being investigated by the prosecutor of Creteil (Paris) in the early 2000s and another inquiry at the Ministry of Sports, which called an end to Beyer’s national involvement but allowed him to return to practicing at club level in Paris.
The French cases are the first mass sexual-abuse allegations in one country since the Larry Nassar and USA Gymnastics scandal rocked the Olympic Movement.
A guest on Franceinfo Maracineanu was asked if she had felt the “omertà” on the sex-abuse issue in France. She replied:
“Sure. It’s why I was the first to denounce the omertà on this subject. Sport involves a truly special relationship between the athlete … and the coach. It is essential for several people to care for a child, to ensure that the child is not alone with an adult when entering a relationship with [a coach] in training, at competitions in a process that, little by little, sees one enclose oneself in an emotional relationship which can go awry – and awry in the most serious of ways. We are talking about pedophilia, about what are clearly illegal acts.”
She employed parents to be more vigilant and noted that trained coaches are now registered and that she had “set up the systematic control of volunteer coaches”.
Sports federations were responsible for outcomes, she declared:
“The important thing is also to make the federations responsible. When the State dismisses a person from contact with children, in no case should the federations be able to take control and re-hire this person. It is unacceptable.”
Federations were “poorly informed about the system of warnings in place and how the law works.” She added:
“This subject has also remained generally taboo in society. It’s only come out in public in recent years. It’s time to ask questions … we have to talk more about violence against women. We are changing the arrangements, on sentencing, on judicial sanction. We, in sport, must take up our part in this fight, and set up things with the federations, to inform them of our action plan, the tools that already exist at the Ministry of Sports. The federations down to the smallest associations France … must have people who watch and who are vigilant.”
Maracineanu Adds Item Top Sports Convention Agenda: Child Protection
Roxana Maracineanu – Photo Courtesy: Roxana Maracineanu
On February 20, she will host a convention of sport which will now have an additional topic on the agenda, said Maracineanu today: child protection.
Isabelle Demongeot, the former tennis player raped by coach Régis de Camaret and now serving 10 years jail. asked: “When are we going to reach out to all these victims?”
Says Maracineanu: “Now … I will meet Isabelle personally to see to what extent she wants to invest in this fight. I met other athletes not part of this [L’Equipe] investigation who want to join the fight. We have already hired a number of athletes.”
She wanted to proceed in a way that the victims “do not have this feeling of guilt,” concluding:
“We have a lot of young children in our federations, who are preparing for the Olympic Games, and there is no question of them doing so if they are put in danger.”