Abuse in sport | Maria (27) works to prevent abuse. Then the colleague was arrested:

BERGEN (Nettavisen): – It was a shock. Of course, it was a shock and completely unreal.

Dalsbø tells Nettavisen about the case that came up in the Bergen sports community in the summer of 2019.

Watch a video interview with her on top of the case.

A highly regarded 29-year-old sports referee was arrested and charged with having sex with children under the age of 16.

– I did well in the carpentry

Dalsbø typically works to counter abuse through his role as project manager for the Safe on the training course, a collaboration between Vestland Idrettskrets, SMISO Hordaland, and Save the Children.

He knew very well who the sports referee was. For a long time he had had the same workplace as her.

– I did not know him personally, but as a colleague. I did it right, I really wasn’t the type of person you thought could do something like that. I experimented against exactly what we externally warned against, and had thoughts like “this should have seen, I even work with this”. But it is not possible to know who may be an abuser, says Dalsbø today.

– What was it like to discover that a person in the same building as you, who works to prevent abuse, had done something like that?

– My first thought was “could this really have happened”, as I caution against thinking when children warn. At the same time, I quickly went into a professional mode, I was quite dependent on him and in that sense I chose not to feel this personally. I had to be a professional and treat this in the same way that I treat other cases, and to deal with that I had to quiet my personal feelings a bit, he says.

The sports referee has been in custody since his arrest last summer and his trial began in Bergen District Court this week.

In addition to sexual relations with children under 16 years of age, the judge is in charge of dealing with images that sexualize children and exploiting their position as a judge to obtain sexual relations.

– I found myself at the door many times.

The 29-year-old has admitted to almost all the circumstances noted in the indictment and risks up to six years in prison.

This week he explained in detail if the actions he admits cause him great shame and guilt.

Dalsbø has not had contact with the person since he was arrested in July 2019.

– What would you have told him if you had met him today?

– Good question. There are many things I would like to say, both personal and professional. I will at least do my best to prevent this from happening again, he says.

Dalsbø admits that he thought they were better equipped in their own workplace to handle these cases than it turned out to be the case.

– There are several things we should have in place. When we travel and have Trygg on the Norwegian sports teams training course, we say that they must not be the club that doesn’t have things in place when abuse occurs. But we weren’t ready for me either. I’ve found myself at the door many times during this case, you realize.

– What didn’t you have in its place?

– Clear handling routines. In the clubs, we help to make contingency plans that show what to do at all times. We didn’t have that here, we lacked a very clear contingency plan. The positive is that the club affected by this had completed the Safe on the training course and had the contingency plan in place. They have been very happy about that in hindsight, thinks Dalsbø.

Support Dalsbø: – It helped us a lot

Svein Kåre Takle is the current Chairman of the Board of Kalandseid IL. It was the club to which the referee was attached until the arrest.

Takle supports Dalsbø in the sense that the club benefited from the fact that they had completed the “Safe Training” course just before the case broke out.

In other words, sports teams are teased about how to behave when warnings of sexual harassment or abuse appear.

– We had a contingency plan and I advise all clubs to have it. He helped us a lot when the case came up. We had that contingency plan because we had only completed that course a few months before. It was extremely helpful when we ended up in the situation we had, he tells Nettavisen.

Several people Nettavisen has spoken to about this case, the sports referee describes as a highly respected and loved person.

Dalsbø believes that this can often make it even more difficult for victims of abuse to report.

– It is a very good point and an important point. In a sports team or where there are small relationships, where everyone knows everyone, it is very difficult to understand that a loved one is capable of such actions. A child or youth who is abused can quickly fear that they will not be believed, he says.

Dalsbø has worked with this topic for almost five years and describes it as “incredibly meaningful to work with something so incredibly nonsensical”.

– Incredibly destructive

She says that the job of preventing such incidents from occurring has become a matter of heart for her. Therefore, this case also made an additional impression.

– Although I hear many different stories, each story hurts. What remains for me is how incredibly devastating it is for children to experience sexual abuse. We see that victims of abuse carry this with them throughout their lives and it can be devastating in ways you didn’t anticipate. It may seem like a cliché, but it’s worth every year of work if a single abuse can be prevented or prevented, she says.

– If there is a child or young person who reads this here, but has not yet dared to tell us about the abuse, what is your message for that person?

– There are safe people to talk to. We know it’s hard to say, but we know from experience that it’s best when you do. There are safe people you can trust and count on, people who will help you, says Dalsbø.

Do you need to report sexual abuse of yourself or others? Contact the police here.