Shaken for three weeks by an unprecedented accumulation of revelations of cases of sexual violence, French sport lays the first bases of a mobilization to fight against these abuses during a national convention, this Friday in Paris.
Main guests of this day organized at the headquarters of the French National Olympic and Sports Committee (CNOSF) on the initiative in particular of the Minister of Sports Roxana Maracineanu, the sports federations.
“Everyone recognizes, we too in the ministry, that we did not measure the scale, the number of cases and the severity,” Roxana Maracineanu explained during an interview with AFP a week ago.
“Today, we realize that these are not isolated cases, and I expect that the federation presidents will realize” during this convention, she continued.
“What I feel is that the federation presidents want to get involved with us,” added the minister, who also waits for the latter to present to her what they are already doing in the face of the risk of sexual violence.
“A time of information and mobilization”, and “the start of a work of co-construction of a robust plan with the sports movement”: this is how, at the ministry, we present the challenges of the day.
– Roadmap in May –
If this first step should lead to the presentation of a roadmap in May around three axes, awareness and prevention actions, support, and supervision of supervisors, first measures should be taken without delay.
Firstly, the extension to all sport volunteers of the integrity check, intended to verify their criminal record and until then only systematic for professional educators.
This project was in preparation before the recent eruption of cases of sexual violence in sport and was intended to be generalized following an experiment carried out since the last school year by the Football League of Center-Val de Loire.
This control would concern both educators and positions of responsibility (president, general secretary and treasurer). That is 1.8 million non-executive volunteers, we estimate at the ministry.
“A colossal job,” agrees Roxana Maracineanu.
In addition, the first feedback is expected on the listening cell and the email address dedicated to collecting testimonies from victims of sexual violence, set up within the ministry itself for several months.
– “Emergency” –
“There is an awareness, but that is not enough to solve the problem, it is only the beginning. Is (this awareness) enough to make it a priority subject?”, asks sociologist Béatrice Barbusse to AFP.
“This is where I’m waiting for the minister,” said the author of the book “Sexism in Sport” (Anamosa, 2016), which will be present at the convention.
“I am waiting, at the exit, for everyone who has responsibilities in sport to really realize the urgency,” she adds.
French sport was plunged into an unprecedented crisis at the end of January when several former skaters, including champion Sarah Abitbol, revealed that they had been victims of rape and sexual assault, committed by different coaches when they were teenagers.
In a book published on January 30 (“Un si long silence”, Plon), Abitbol accuses his ex-trainer Gilles Beyer of having raped her when she was between 15 and 17 years old, in the early 1990s.
These different revelations led to the resignation of the irremovable boss of French skating Didier Gailhaguet, put under pressure by Roxana Maracineanu who had questioned his “moral and personal responsibility”.
Since then, other testimonies have accumulated, in different disciplines: football, horse riding, climbing, skiing or even athletics.
