Dangerous attitudes must leave the Bergen Riding Club

Must be cleaned in grassroots sports.

Manager

This is a leader. The editorial expresses the journalistic idea of ​​Bergens Tidende: an independent, independent, liberal and bourgeois political party newspaper (not socialist).

VG has over time published a full series of articles on abuse in grassroots sports. The stories and personal figures paint a grim picture of what healthy and positive environments should be for children and youth.

The revelations show that grassroots sports are unfortunately well suited for abusers and that different sports clubs have a great job to do.

In the latest VG article, a management at Bergen Riding Club is now described with dangerous and outdated attitudes.

In 2016, one Trainer in the stable of Blomsterdalen sentenced to two years in prison for abusing several young women. He was also the employer of several of these.

Among the coach’s victims is Isabelle Gjerstad. When she reported the trainer in 2013, she is said to have experienced that the motorcycle community turned against her and rather turned the abuser around.

When VG contacts Bergen Riding Club today, General Manager and Head Coach Amund Eide states that he does not view the incident as abuse. On the contrary, he describes the criticism against the man as “a witch hunt” and believes he knows that the sexual relationship was voluntary.

Eide is a personal friend of the man.

Is amazing that the general director of a sports club that has several hundred members, most of them young girls, can express it and keep his position.

Gjerstad has won both in the district court and in the court of appeal, and he was not alone in his accusations against the coach. That the motorcycle community has turned its back on you and still has a general manager that undermines your credibility in public indicates a deep culture.

The impression is reinforced by the fact that several members of the board still have economic and social relations with the condemned coach. BT reported Monday that the president’s own son works in the coach’s stable in Denmark. The trainer is constantly appearing at riding competitions and most recently in December the Bergen Riding Club paid to advertise the doom’s stable in Denmark.

The Riding Club Board he now claims that they distance themselves from CEO Eide’s statements and attitudes toward sexual abuse.

It is difficult to see how this is compatible with the fact that several of them have close ties to the coach who was banned from Norwegian organized sports for 20 years after the abuse.

Broadband sports should be a safe place for children and youth. It cannot be as long as clubs prioritize long-standing loyalty over the safety of their own young members.

Change of the Council of the Sports Agency Tvinnereim (Labor) has taken the initiative to meet with the Bergen Riding Club over the New Year. It’s good. So the club should have a general manager who does not deny sexual abuse in their own ranks.