richard goldschmidt hat geschrieben: ↑23.05.2019, 03:22
Hi an alle Judokas,
ich beziehe mich auf folgenden Beitrag:
viewtopic.php?t=5704
Mein Trainer forderte mich am 19.04.2009 beim "4. Heiko-Hornuß-Erinnerungsturnier" als mein Schutzbefohlener auf, beim Wiegen meine Unterhose auszuziehen, weil ich etwas zu viel für seine gewünschte Gewichtsklasse wog. Ich kam seiner Aufforderung zunächst nicht nach. Daraufhin nötigte er mich energisch, meine Unterhose vor vielen (zum Teil gleichaltrigen) Frauen und Männer auszuziehen. Ich tat dies unter Druck seiner Autorität als Kampfsporttrainer. Ich hatte ihm vertraut, er war seit ca. 10 Jahren mein Trainer, also seit meiner Kindheit, und ich war damals 15 Jahre alt (also minderjährig). Ich habe mich so sehr geschämt und fühlte mich meiner Würde als Mensch beraubt. Kurz darauf habe ich aufgehört. Bis heute verfolgt mich diese Situation fast jeden Tag (auch in meinen Träumen). Die Hass- und Rachegefühle gegen diesen Menschen lassen mir keine Ruhe mehr und quälen mich jeden Tag. Mein Trainer hat sich bis heute nicht richtig bei mir dafür entschuldigt. Er sagt, er kann sich an nichts erinnern und sieht auch keinen Fehler bei sich. Es tut ihm nur "aufrichtig" Leid, wenn er "unbewusst" ein Teil meiner Probleme sein sollte. Ich hoffe er weiß, was er damit angerichtet hat. Es ist einfach nur traurig, wenn Judo nur noch aus Medaillen gewinnen und Gewichtsklassen erreichen besteht. Es geht so viel verloren dabei
Thank you for your post. Please, allow me to respond in English. While I understand German perfectly, I am not a native speaker of German and cannot write it without mistakes, and it also would take me too long to do so. I am sure if there is anything I write that is unclear that someone one on this forum who understands English will be able to translate it into flawless German.
As a former judo competitor, who also is an international referee, high-performance coach and qualified medical sexologist, the situation you mention is not alien to me at all. Over the past few years many cases have come out of both sexual abuse and misbehavior with a sexual content in judo. Many of the people who have come forward are now adult women and men who were victims of such behaviors when they were youngsters. The #MeToo movement and evolution today fortunately makes these kinds of problems more accessible to an open discussion.
Just like in the Catholic Church, scouts, education, medicine, you will find people in sports who are there because they have found a way to use their activity as a veil for covering up their real intention, i.e. to be in close contact with a target group (mostly young girls or boys, or adult women) in order to provide some form of sexual gratification, which can be anywhere on the scale from voyeurism, inappropriate touching, unnecessary physical contact, bullying, molestation, or even rape.
I remember these situations very well from the days I was in school, an elite Catholic school. Whereas there were many devoted and honest teachers, there certainly were also a number of very well known friars or priests who were in children's education for other reasons. It was a whole system. My school still had formal boarding school ("Internat"). So, clearly, the friars who volunteered to do "supervision" in the dormitories of the boys knew very well why they volunteered for it ... There was another friar who ran the Infirmary. So, when a kid fell ill in class or injured himself during gymnastics they were sent to this guy, who always found one or another reason to have them take off their pants ... Much of this inappropriate behavior in those days was very different from how it is presented in news papers today. People today "think" that these abuses were all a big secret happening behind closed doors, but it wasn't at all like that. That precisely is the point: it was NOT a secret, these behaviors were well known, and many of these guys had physical contact with children in the open while other kids were present. It was part of an entire culture.
I heard from a friend of mine who is ten years younger than I and who later went to the same school that one day the gym teacher punched one of those friars in the face, because he was always "hanging around" when the boys were in the changing rooms or taking a shower. Oh, and in spite of many such scandals having hit the news, none of what went on in my school has ever reached the press. We are now decades later so most of these perverts had already retired years later and most of them are probably long deceased ... I could write an entire book about it.
This month's magazine of my judo federation contains an interview with a couple of women from the early days of judo competition, so beginning and mid-1970s. One woman describes how there were only male referees in those days, so male referees also supervised women competitors during the weigh-in, and they joked that the referees were waiting in line to do this. This is not exaggerated, as I remember seeing this and being surprised about it in those days.
I became a judo referee fairly young at the minimal age allowed in those days and while still active as a competitor, and I remember that being allowed to do the women's weigh-ins was some kind of perverse competition among referees. I was only one of the lower category regional referees in those days, and they refereeing committee changed the rules so that only national referees of higher were allowed to do women's weigh-ins. In this way, it became the perverse perk of the more senior referees.
I witnessed the behavior you describe many times. Some officials would always try to push athletes to take their pants off even when it was clear that doing so would still not get them into their desired weight class, or for no reason at all.
Unlike you I never had a coach, so I went all by myself to contests and stood up against that sort of inappropriate stuff. When I competed I always wore Speedo swimming briefs which were about the lightest weight thing you could wear as underpants in those days, so really the chance that taking that off would get me under the weight limit was extremely unlikely. In any case, I have always bluntly refused to anyone suggesting that kind of nonsense to me when I was competing as a youngster.
I certainly also vividly remember often far too many unnecessary people hanging out in the room during weigh-ins, i.e. coaches and too many officials ...
There is more social control today against that sort of thing going on, but it still is not completely eradicated. I remember a few years ago going with some kids from my club to a local competition, and there was one girl in my group who was just above the weight limit, so she was confronted with the same problem. How did I resolve it ? Well, I told her to get her mother who was also in the audience, I explained the problem and her options, and made it clear to her that she should decide herself in consultation with her parent what she wanted to do, and should make that decision without any pressure. I also guaranteed to her that I would ensure that only women would be in the room and only those necessary. There were a few males lingering around too not too quick to leave the room, so I personally kicked them out, closed the door after she went in with her mother, and made sure that no one would come in as long as I was blocking the door.
Certainly athletes who are still kids and who still do not think in sexual terms need to be protected from people who have not so nice motives for being around them, and you would be surprised how many of them there were. I used to teach at university in the United States and every summer, on campus there were training camps for young girls wanting to become cheerleaders. Our campus was very beautiful with a nice and extensive lawn where they were practicing while wearing shorts and tops. These girls were not local so they traveled there unaccompanied by their parents. Well, you would be surprised, how many cars suddenly showed up on the parking lot, standing there for hours, mostly with a single guy sitting in there sometimes with binoculars. More than once I felt I had to call our campus security to check out who these people were and what they were doing there. Those parking lots were not public property, so unless you were a student, a faculty member, of a legitimate visitor to my university, one had no business for being there.
Just two years ago there was a major scandal in the press which involved our judo federation's national performance director for alleged inappropriate behavior with young female judo athletes. Another very high profile case is still going on in Austria, or should I say ... "Kiev" where the accused is still hiding from law enforcement while Interpol still has a search warrant out against him.
Sexual misbehavior by judo coaches, instructors and officials has been going on for decades, but just as in the Catholic Church, has been mostly covered up. I remember well in the days I was competing that for a woman trying to get into the national women's team required more the kind of selection tests you would expect from a bordello than from a sports team. It didn't stop then. American double Olympic judo champion Kayla Harrisson has been a very vocal advocate in making the judo and sports world aware of abuse of young athletes by their coaches.
The problem is that the sort of thing that you describe is more in a grey zone. When a coach sexually abuses his/her athlete, it usually is not so difficult for police to find proof, as there is a serious chance there will be cell phone traffic, SMS messages, improper E-mails, and other athletes who may have heard or seen something, and in the case of Kayla Harrison, her coach even videotaped his interactions with her, when she was only 13-14 years old. Usually there also are real acts, such as touching or more. The actions you describe are of a voyeuristic nature and more "incidental" and more difficult to prove. There won't be any written evidence, the coach is just one of several people present, there will be other coaches or officials who are also present, and there may be kids who feel more at ease.
In 2015 a scholarly survey was published that precisely dealt with sexual inappropriate behavior in the judo world. I think you may be able to download it from here:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/288208351
In doing the work the author has to fend off several attempts of intimidation since clearly judo organs and officials did not want much of this to be publicly known. Despite their attempts, the paper in the mean time has been downloaded thousands of times (also from other sites) suggesting that people interested or involved in judo have some kind of reason to be wanting to know more about this going on.
The kind of issues you are describing from your personal experience are mentioned in the paper on page 102-103, and there is a picture as a reference.