(Paris) The former French figure skating champion Sarah Abitbol broke the ice by revealing the rapes that her former coach inflicted on her. Hailed as a “heroine”, she nevertheless sometimes feels “punished” for having spoken.
Posted at 10:57 a.m.
“If I had to do it again, I would do it and even before,” said Sarah Abitbol gently and firmly in an interview with AFP, freed from – almost – all her anxieties.
In January 2020, driven by a vital need to put her words, Sarah Abitbol gave an account of the rapes imposed by her trainer Gilles Beyer when she was 15 years old, in Such a long silence.
Thirty years after the facts, prescribed, his testimony had the effect of a bomb, pushing the president of the French Federation of ice sports, Didier Gailhaguet, to resign.
“This book was my last chance. I was tired of not living normally. You don’t even realize that you have a deep problem because you don’t want to see and we can miss out on our lives, ”says the skater, six-time European medalist in the couple category.
These revelations were made three years after the start of the freedom of speech initiated by the #metoo movement. “In 2020, society was ready to hear. There was a media power to make it hit hard, to save myself from this grip and to help the new generation”.
“There were more than fifty (sports) federations affected, it’s terrible and both positive, we had to raise awareness,” she notes.
“Just tell my truth”
Almost three years later, she is “said thank you as a champion who has spoken”. Testimonies are pouring in: “Even 75-year-old grandmothers tell me ‘I was still having nightmares, I saw myself in your book, I noted down just like you'”, says the one who wrote in a small notebook about the violence. of which she was the victim and which she “reopened after 30 years of silence”.
Sarah Abitbol now lives most of the time in Miami, in the United States, and regains a taste for life: “when you wake up in the morning and you have no anxiety, even if there is still a little bit, you feel better. You can fly alone, you can go on an internship, take care of the children while sleeping alone in your room. Somewhere, you feel that you are coming back to life”.
She created an association “The voice of Sarah”, to support victims of sexual violence; she accompanies victims when they file a complaint at the police station. She is also preparing a skating number for the magazine Holiday on Ice (from February to April 2023), “a message to all victims of violence”.
And it was while preparing for this show that she realized that her words were disturbing.
“When I needed skaters, in certain rinks, to try out, certain clubs said: “if it’s for Sarah Abitbol, no, we don’t prefer”. It’s the double penalty of having spoken, ”she says.
“It’s even more complicated when sometimes you also offer your services based on your experience as a high-level champion and at the same time you want to raise awareness. (We are told) “It was Sarah Abitbol, she was the one who talked about all this, who broke the image of this federation”.
” Yes ! “, she says. “But I didn’t want to break anything, I just wanted to speak my truth to make things happen for the children”. “Do they have something to reproach themselves for? They are afraid ? What is happening ? This is exactly where I want to go, I want to see what’s going on! »
As for the legal consequences concerning his attacker, “we’ve been dragging on for two years”. She wants others to talk. “My attacker is no longer in place, he is at home, he goes to the police station once a month, he is not in prison, but he can no longer go outside because everyone knows his face. For me, he is punished. But I would prefer him to be in prison”.