Five hundred people affected in the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising alone, according to the report on sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, which has been causing a sensation since Thursday.

Three thousand victims of assault and violence who have come forward to the Independent Child Sexual Abuse Commission in six years.

A question arises: To what extent do such acts also take place in the sports clubs that attract children and young people and to which parents like to entrust their offspring?

Michael Reinsch

Correspondent for sports in Berlin.

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Every fifth story that those affected tell on the website geschichten-die-zaehlen.de, which was released on Wednesday, about their terrible experiences and their consequences, comes from sports, nineteen out of a hundred.

"With the abuse, it's like someone wantonly hitting me with an iron bar on my knee, only invisible," writes a woman who was regularly raped by a football coach before she was twelve years old.

A former swimmer reports on the consequences of his abuse: "I am now over 60 years old and you would think that after a good 50 years everything would heal and not be any worse, but it is not." The shock is all the greater, when quite a few of those affected describe how the abuse happened under the eyes of classmates and teammates, club members, friends and parents.

In everyday life.

"Special Taboo"

"The portal 'geschichten-die-zaehlen.de' is a place where people's terrible experiences are honored and this public recognition is given for the injustice they have suffered, but also for their life's work," says Matthias Katsch, also a survivor. As a member of the commission, Katsch is responsible for the sport context. Those affected should be given a voice and their experiences made visible. The biographical reports and experiences on the portal are representative of the many untold stories.

Does sport have a particularly large number of these untold stories to offer? Only 115 of the 3,000 who came forward to report to the Commission had suffered a sporting assault. This does not correspond to every fifth case as on the website, but one out of 26. But sport, says Katsch, is underrepresented in number: "Breaking the silence is apparently still difficult for those affected today, because the topic of sexual abuse is in Sport once again a special taboo. To this day, those affected see many obstacles to speaking, education and processing here in particular.”

In traditional ideas of sport, it is also considered a quality of a trainer to push and grind athletes hard, and for athletes not to be squeamish.

The whole thing has to be protected: team, club, association, the sport.

Anyone who doesn't do this has to fear being called a polluter.

As reported by Deutschlandfunk this week, the German Olympic Sports Confederation (DOSB) finally signed a contract in November last year that obliges it to pay 300,000 euros into the supplementary help system (EHS) with the Sexual Abuse Fund - quietly and secretly, without informing the public.

In 2016, the umbrella organization stopped making payments and always argued that it was not allowed to pay for tax reasons.