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Sexual abuse of minors in sports: “I thought I couldn’t say anything”

“The only thing I thought about was why was nobody helping me,” recalls Marie Dinkel of the worst time of her life. At the age of 13, she and two other girls become part of the performance team of her club, TV Gladenbach, which had a judo team in this town some 754 kilometers north of Frankfurt am Main. Along with regular training, the girls also received private lessons “in a small room in a school gym,” Dinkel tells DW. “Because we were three girls, we always had to train with ‘him’.”

“He” was actually Marie Dinkel’s favorite trainer, until he repeatedly abused her. “I trusted him, but I thought I couldn’t say anything because I deserved what he was doing to me,” recalls Dinkel, “because I wasn’t good at training, I didn’t perform well in the last tournament, and there had to be a reason. why she was treated that way.

Marie Dinkel, judo fighter, in 2009.Image: Privat

Judo pants with tight laces

For Marie Dinkel, these are traumatic moments that still affect her. She well remembers how her trainer once pinned her pelvis with her hips during an exercise. “Then he put his hand in my pants from behind. I couldn’t get out because I was in shock,” she explains. “I waited until he released me.”

Another attack occurred in a larger training room. “There were 10 to 15 people in the room that day. I was sitting on one of the mat carts when he came over and stood in front of me.” In front of the assembled team, he again grabbed him under his pants from behind. Marie, now 25, thinks someone should have seen this, and yet no one helped her.

The three girls also did not speak to each other about the abuse. At some point, however, without saying anything, they began to “tie their judo pants as tight as possible” before training.

A year passed before Marie Dinkel was able to break the silence and talk to her mother about the coach’s attacks. She told him about it on a car ride home. Her parents informed the club. The coach, who is also a teacher, is prohibited from entering the establishment. Marie was encouraged to return to training after he left, but she continued to feel shame and guilt, something that many who are sexually abused experience.

Marie Dinkel today, practicing judo with her husband, Constantin Dinkel.
Marie Dinkel today, practicing judo with her husband, Constantin Dinkel.Image: Julia Dorny/DW

Many obstacles, huge number of cases

Often, the perpetrators of sexual abuse use a kind of manipulation process to gain the trust of the victims, the so-called “grooming”, or online sexual harassment and abuse, criminal forms of approaching a child or adolescent, aimed at children do not tell their parents or trusted adults what is happening to them. Also problematic is the fact that children often have to tell multiple adults before they are believed. That experience of lack of trust in them by an adult makes them not want to talk about the abuse with anyone else.

The problem of sexual abuse of minors in sport is massive. Researchers from the Higher School of Sports in Germany, in the city of Cologne, and the University Clinic of Ulm, presented a report, under the title “Safe Sport”, on the safety of children and adolescents in sports organizations in the country. In the study, they indicate that there are about 200,000 children and adolescents affected. But there are no exact figures because there are no international standards for collecting data on sexual abuse of minors in sports. “The definitions of sexual abuse of minors are different between the different institutions, and they do not exchange their data with each other,” explains Andreas Jud, project coordinator at the Ulm University Clinic for Child Psychotherapy and Psychiatry, to DW.

Minors who are victims of sexual abuse often feel ashamed and guilty, and are discouraged from talking to people they trust, or from denouncing the perpetrators.
Minors who are victims of sexual abuse often feel ashamed and guilty, and are discouraged from talking to people they trust, or from denouncing the perpetrators.Image: Lehtikuva Marja Airio / dpa / picture Alliance

According to data from the independent commissioner for matters related to child sexual abuse of the German Government (UBSKM, for its acronym in German), the criminal statistics of the German Police recorded 14,594 child abuse crimes in Germany in 2020. Undisclosed investigations of the last years showed that about one in seven or eight adults in Germany experienced sexual violence in childhood or adolescence. Enter women, even one in five. In addition, women generally suffered serious sexual abuse.

Panic attacks and vomiting

At the age of 18, Marie Dinkel’s body began to react to the trauma suffered in childhood, and the girl suffers from panic attacks more and more often, even several times a day. “She would sit me on the floor and rock me back and forth, because that kind of gave me security,” she says. “Sometimes I screamed. I isolated myself more and more from the outside world. That always ended with great exhaustion, I couldn’t go on any longer, and I vomited.”

Marie Dinkel wants to support people who have been sexually abused in sport.
Marie Dinkel wants to support people who have been sexually abused in sport.Image: Julia Dorny/DW

Lack of sensitivity and openness towards sexual abuse

“Marie is very brave, as she continues to practice judo despite what was done to her as a child. She wanted to continue, despite everything that happened to her,” Constantin Dinkel, Marie’s husband, tells DW. “And she is still working on the abuse today. It doesn’t end tomorrow, and it’s a difficult process that she faces every day, in judo and in other situations as well,” he says.

Marie Dinkel is an active fighter in the German Second Judo League as well as a trainer. Her main profession is Physiotherapist in Switzerland. Her goal is to become an interlocutor for athletes and women who have suffered the same as her. However, there is still a lack of openness in society regarding the issue of sexual violence in sport, and those affected often have the feeling that they are not taken seriously.

Furthermore, Dinkel would like to contribute to a change in sports clubs. There are now two child protection officers at TV Gladenbach, one of whom is Marie’s brother Ben.

(cp/lgc)

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