A 16-year-old girl experienced nightmares at the hands of her rowing coach. The girl, champion of Greece in rowing, complains that her 38-year-old coach raped her.
“It has destroyed a part of my life, some years of my life, for which all I will have left is a blackness and all I want is to erase them from my memory,” says the minor, speaking to Live News .
“He hugged her, kissed her, the child froze, stunned. He touched her,” says the mother of the athlete.
“He tortures me every day in my sleep”
“Everything that happened is something that until now, a year and a half has passed, I have not accepted that it has happened. I can’t accept that this thing has happened” says the girl who remains shocked by what happened.
She finished first and became the champion of Greece. That night her joy was overshadowed by what the athlete is complaining about.
“It’s something that torments me every day in my sleep and when I’m doing other things. All the events, everything that happened, the way everything happened. I feel like I can’t get over it and I can’t forget what has happened,” he confesses.
“He told her he was in love, he was watching her”
“He said that he is in love with her, the child there reacted and showed his discomfort and that he does not wish for such a thing,” says the mother of the 16-year-old.
Her parents trusted him blindly. They saw in him a mentor who would help their daughter achieve her goals in sports.
“With such a person you develop a relationship – like a parent – of trust. You talk to him every day. You know he has the role of a father in training” says the mother.
The then 16-year-old was afraid to talk about what she was going through every time she went to practice. The 38-year-old had suggested to her parents that he bring her home and then he found the opportunity to take advantage of the little girl, as he complains.
“His whole behavior towards me was getting worse and worse. I was afraid every day about how it would turn out. I felt destroyed, I felt that it wasn’t worth living anymore with all that was happening,” said the athlete, with her mother adding: “This happened later and another time in the group, in the locker room, in the team van when he was taking her for training”.
In a difficult period of her life, the 16-year-old found the courage to finally talk to her mother and denounce what she was systematically experiencing from her coach.
“I decided I can’t live like this anymore and I decided to talk to my parents. I was now acutely aware of the danger I ran from this man, the fear of facing him.’
“He was watching her, he was down the house, he was out of the group,” her mother revealed.
The 38-year-old has been given a deadline and is expected to apologize on Monday. The 18-year-old girl is still struggling with the injuries that left her.
“I listened to her “frozen” telling me what she experienced, I will be by her side”
The mother of the athlete spoke to Live News about how she felt when her daughter opened her heart to her and told her what she experienced at the hands of her coach.
“About a year ago the child decided to talk to me, I understood that it was something serious. But he could not in any way lead my mind to what could be so serious that he wanted to tell me. She started to describe to me what happened with her coach and I was shocked beyond belief. She told us about all the abusive behavior and how the first rape came about. She described to us all the times it happened to her and how she experienced it all. I listened to my daughter “frozen” and told her that I will be by her side” described the athlete’s mother.
As he said, they have been waiting for justice to act for a year.
