Charkashyna on sexual abuse in sports: “It’s America, they know how to make money”

Belorussian rhythmic gymnast Liubou Charkashyna holds a very high position in the FIG – she’s the President of the Athletes Comission and, as such, is one of the members of the Executive Committee. One of the roles of the Athletes Committee is to listen to the concerns of the athletes and to help them, but, perhaps, Charkashyna is not the right person to turn to if an athlete is dealing with sexual abuse.

In an interview with a Belorussian portal Nasha Nina, Charkashyna was asked to comment on the recent sexual abuse scandals in gymnastics and on whether the phenomenon is really widespread. Charkashyna said that while she thinks sexual abuse is horrible, she believes it’s not really widespread in the sports and the number of abuse cases in the U.S. is quite exaggerated and people claim they were abused in order to earn money or to get revenge on someone:

“Well, [sexual abuse] is a very serious worldwide trend now, it’s true. For some reason, we immediately think about women, but, unfortunately, there were also cases among men. There was the Olympic Forum in Buenos Aires, during the Youth Olympic Games, and this topic was seriously discussed there. I listened to two people, not young already, a woman and a man, who were talking about the abuse they experience in sports. When I listened to them, my heart froze, truly. It’s horrible, horrible when you are young and you cannot, for whatever your reasons are, tell the parents or something else… And when this woman told what the coach did to her, and when at the end, she couldn’t bear it anymore and told her mother, the mother hung herself, and the father kept living with this pain. This was scary, very scary.

I admit it’s possible to believe that yes, there are such cases in the sports but not the amount of specifically the sports cases that have been thrown at us… as an opportunity to earn money on that or [get revenge] for the old insults, to shame the names of the coaches or someone else… Because, well, this is America, they know how to make money, you need to understand this.

It’s an obvious fact that this problem exists not just in sports. Well, ok, there are single cases in sports, but just go out and look at your neighbor’s apartment, isn’t there abuse going on right now? And the woman will stay silent! It happens to men less often, it’s more often [happens] to women, and what, the woman tolerates it. I only don’t understand — what for? Perhaps, she is afraid to lose that man or something? You don’t need to go far, this horrible piece of news about the woman and the baby in Luninets*. This, this is much scarier than what happens in sports. But we raised this now as if it’s harassment only in sports. There isn’t a lot of it in our [sport].”

The interviewer talked about the famous case of Olga Korbut accusing her ex-coach Renald Knysh of abusing and raping her and of several gymnasts from the same gym who said they were also abused by Knysh. Cherkashyna said that she believes people should come forward when it happens, not many years later:

“The very same Olga Korbut. Well, you’ve lived your life, you had already forgotten where that Knysh is, in which country he lives, you’ve been living your whole life in America and after that you say: he abused me. No, I’m not saying that [this trauma] is scary but we cannot now know 100% whether it’s true or not. You have to talk about it the moment it happens, not 80 or 50 years later. The Soviet time [when she couldn’t talk about it] has been over for quite a while.

What is important to take from all this is that you shouldn’t be afraid to talk about it and shouldn’t feel like a bad person if this happened to you and should get help right away until this wound leaves a scar, that is something I agree with. But this doesn’t apply only to sports, this should be in life, in general, so that a person wouldn’t be afraid and wouldn’t let it the situation escalate to when you are being abused.”

Ok, got it. Don’t put yourself into the situation when you can be abused, don’t stay in that situation, and when you come forward, you will be believed but only if you did it right when it happened. It seems that Charkashyna needs some education on the topics of abuse and trauma and how childhood abuse is processed.

You’d think that with the newly established FIG Ethics Foundation that is, among other goals, supposed to tackle abuse in gymnastics, FIG officials are getting that education. Especially the Athletes commission which is collaborating with the Ethics Foundation to deal with the issue. However, if an FIG official, one of the people charged with solving the abuse crisis, believes that people claim they were abused in order to earn money and holds quite ignorant and outdated views on abuse, is there much hope that the situation is truly changing?

*There was recently a case of a disabled girl in Luninets, Belarus, who was being regularly raped by an adult family friend.