At times, the trial of Vincent Pateau, coach at the France gymnastics center in Marseille, tried for moral harassment, seemed to be that of a sport where the high level is reached very young and the bodies worked intensely from childhood. The case of his counterpart Pierre Ettel, implicated by only one of the five young plaintiffs and initially scheduled for the afternoon was postponed to November 7, as the court proceedings were stretched in the face of the many witnesses called by the defense. by Vincent Pateau.
But for the most part, the testimonies of the three young plaintiffs present at the hearing exposed their discomfort, which they attribute to their former coach: “I went to the gym with a lump in my stomach,” said Colline, 17 years old today and a still slender body. Since the filing of the complaint in 2021, Hill is the only one to have pursued the gym and her Olympic dream by leaving for Dijon.
Bullying, remarks and punishments
“The hardest thing is the words, the words that remain,” explained the young athlete between two irrepressible bursts of tears. “You are less than nothing”, “pathetic”, “a weak”, “not a warrior”, she related. “When it’s repeated several times a year, you end up believing it”, summarized the gymnast depicting “an atmosphere of terror” before returning to the bench of the civil parties and receiving the support of her comrades in apparatus. . It was his mother, a former gymnast, also a trainer who gave the alert. “I know the top level. But I warned because it was going too far.
The young gymnasts from the pole spent six hours a day in the gymnasium, in addition to the school curriculum. Alix, 11 years old at the time, “vomited in the car” driving her to the room, as the anxiety was strong. “We had to continue with bloody hands. When we complained, he made us climb the rope – an exercise that we also did every day”. Among the “punishments” described, that known as “the locker room” was felt to be particularly humiliating. “A ritual,” explained Alix.
“When I started or when I couldn’t do an exercise, Vincent told me to go to the locker room”. A dismissal that the coach never saw as a punishment. “When you train thirty hours a week, there are times when it’s pointless to insist. I could say go get dressed go home”. But at 11, Alix, living in Aix, and unlike other older young athletes, could not return home. “I’m not saying it was good, and I don’t anymore. It was a mistake. But I did not know that she could feel this as a punishment, ”defended Vincent Pateau.
Parade of defense witnesses
He received the support of Thaïs, 18, trained by Vincent Pateau since the end of his primary school and today on the road to the Olympics. “Going to the locker room is not a punishment. We can come to our senses. I wanted to testify because I was shocked by what I could read in articles, ”explained the 2017 and 2018 French champion who also obtains good results in international tournaments. She says she has never seen or heard of “degrading remarks”. “A conspiracy”, even split Emilie Roy, also coach of the pole in Marseille, another of the many witnesses cited by the defense. Cheyenne and Léa, two other athletes trained by Vincent Pateau – who also hosted them – considered “rope or locker room punishments impossible”. Judging “normal that a coach jostles his athletes a little for the very high level”.
Like these reported words: “I want you to be whores on the apparatus”. “No, I told the girls: ‘I want you to be bitches and killers'”, corrected the defendant. And the president to note “a relationship to the body-object” of the athletes.
Precisely, one of the other grievances advanced to characterize moral harassment is insulting remarks on bodies and weight in particular. The gymnasts were weighed in twice a week, marking their “score” on a board. Inès, 21 now, felt particularly targeted. “It wasn’t just weighings, but words on my body, words that stayed. And for me the weighings, it was rather every day, ”says the one who weighed 48 kg for 1 meter 55. The psychological examination carried out revealed in her an obsessive anxiety and eating disorders for which she was hospitalized for two months in a clinic.
“I was part of this malaise”
“When you fall three meters high, 500 grams more, it can cause a serious injury,” justified Vincent Pateau. “I mismanaged. There was incompetence five years ago. Today it is no longer like that. The first dietician we put in place was with her. But in words, no. Once, I told him, the work you do is not clean. Looks like a little pig.”
“We were not equipped to supervise girls who perhaps did not have the means to expect the highest level. Are we better off today? I believe. I couldn’t get those five kids out. (…) What is true is their discomfort. And that I was part of this malaise, ”concluded Vincent Pateau in the face of questions from Anne-Laure Rousset, the victims’ lawyer.
Véronique Legras, high level director at the French Gymnasium Federation (FFG), who is also a civil party in this story, explains to the court “not to have been aware of these practices. But as a director, I love changing the culture and initiating change”.
A change too late for the prosecutor who felt “that a piece of omerta has arisen” with this harassment file. “Practices to lead athletes to excellence cannot escape the law,” she noted. And to require fifteen months of suspended prison sentence and a ban on practicing, the duration of which will be assessed by the court, if it were to declare Vincent Pateau guilty.