Two years after the facts, the soap opera Didier Gailhaguet continues. The former French skating boss had the State condemned last Friday to pay him 5,000 euros in moral damages, for having “pressured” to obtain his resignation from the federation, at the start of 2020, due to the scandal. of sexual violence within the discipline.
In this decision consulted this Monday by AFP, the administrative court of Paris considers that the Minister of Sports Roxana Maracineanu “exerted pressure (…) decisive” to bring him to resign, preventing the French Federation of ice sports ” to speak freely on the subject.
Two weeks before his resignation, several former skaters, including Sarah Abitbol in her book “Un si long silence”, had accused their former coaches, in particular Gilles Beyer, of rape and sexual assault. Didier Gailhaguet, who had presided over the FFSG since 1998, with the exception of a parenthesis between 2004 and 2007, had been accused of having kept the latter in the circuit, despite suspicions in 2000, which he defends himself. He had first made an administrative appeal without success, and had then taken the case to the administrative court.
The latter retained one of the arguments of the former boss of the FFSG, who considered that the Minister, by public speaking, “interfered in the competences of the federation to impose his resignation while the conditions for revocation of the mandate of president are strictly defined in the statutes of the federation and exclude any intervention by the State”.
The resigning president demanded 152,550 euros, corresponding to the 27 months of compensation he would have received if he had gone to the end of his term, as well as 150,000 euros in non-pecuniary damage.
The court found him wrong on the first point, but awarded him 5,000 euros in non-pecuniary damage, considering that “his image and reputation (had) been damaged” in particular because “the alleged facts had not yet been established and could be attributed to him.
In a press release, his lawyers, Me William Bourdon and Brengarth, welcomed an “exceptional” decision which “sanctions the interference of a minister (…) for purely political purposes. It gives him back his unjustly flouted honor within the ice sports community and more generally the national sports movement, ”according to them.
Following the revelations of Sarah Abitbol, the Ministry of Sports had launched an investigation with the General Inspectorate of Education, Sport and Research (IGESR). His report scratched the functioning of the FFSG marked by “a strong concentration of powers”, in particular in the hands of Didier Gailhaguet, source of a “form of omerta”.