INTERVIEW
To end sexual violence in sport, Roxana Maracineanu, the Minister of Sports, convenes the leaders of the various sports federations for a national convention on Friday. The objective, around the interventions of academics, associations and athletes, is to bring the world of sport to develop a prevention plan. "We need an agency for the integrity of sport, which unites all of the wills so that sport is protected," pleads the microphone of Europe 1 Bernard Giudicelli, the president of the French Tennis Federation (FFT).
"There is an awareness but we need concrete and practical things. We need a method of escalating violence and sexual assault", explains Bernard Giudicelli. This official thus requests the government to make available to the federations "a tool" which makes it possible to act in the face of this type of behavior.
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"The real subject, on which we must move forward, is the voice of young people," said the boss of the FFT. "A young person who is 16 years old today is not a young person who was 16 years old ten years ago. Today, everyone on a smartphone, the word circulates very quickly. The problem is that if it circulates very quickly between young people, it circulates very little between young people and adults ... "
If the recent cases of sexual violence in skating have fueled the news, in 2007 already, the world of tennis had been shaken by the revelations of Isabelle Demongeot who denounced in a book the rapes of which she had been victims, as well as d other players, from coach Régis de Camaret. This case forced the FFT to take measures, ahead of the other sports federations. "We have appointed an integrity delegate who now embodies all of these subjects", explains Bernard Giudicelli. "From a judicial point of view, we do not hesitate to bring a civil action," he adds. "It is in the nature of things, when we are a federation and one of our athletes is affected, to mobilize."