Experts have estimated that Robert Colon, an 80-year-old retiree who was at the time a volunteer coach in this high-level sports center "is not accessible to criminal sanction" and "cannot therefore be summoned to appear in court" because he has memory problems and cognitive disorders, Saint-Etienne prosecutor David Charmatz told AFP.

His state of physical and mental health "did not allow his hearing" by the gendarmes in charge of the investigation, he specified.

An investigation for "rape and sexual assault" was opened in February 2021 when complaints were filed by six former gymnasts aged 12 to 13 at the time of the events.

Since then, the investigations have led "to the discovery of other victims", specified the prosecutor without further details.

First complaints accusing the same trainer of sexual violence committed in 1985-1986 had been covered by the prescription before the opening of this new investigation.

"I would have liked him and all the technical staff who at the time allowed this thing to be more worried, that they had to answer for their actions, that would have relieved me", reacted Saturday Juliette Drahi, one of the complainants.

"It also introduces a lot of regrets compared to the time when I started talking about it around me, in 2015, and when I was not heard," she told AFP.

The only sanction, a former trainer who had said nothing after having received the confidences of young victims was definitively banned from any supervisory function with minors, at the end of an administrative investigation opened at the request of the Ministry of Sports.

An appeal by Muriel Cavallero to the ministry was rejected, Fabienne Bourdais, the Ministerial Delegate in charge of the fight against violence in sport, told AFP.

The administrative investigation led to the hearing of more than twenty witnesses, mainly former high-level gymnasts and their French or Chinese supervisors.

The commission in charge of the administrative aspect will propose measures to prohibit any activity with minors to sanction other people who at the time did not act to protect the young adolescent girls entrusted to them, according to an informed source.

For his part, the executive director of the FFGym, David Valley, told AFP that he had "full confidence in Le Pôle gym de Saint-Etienne as it operates today".

It is one of the two preparation centers for French athletes for the 2024 Paris Olympics.

© 2022 AFP