A victim of abuse by the Barcelona coach: “At the age of 6 Benaiges pulled down my panties and touched me everywhere”

The former coordinator of grassroots football has been denounced for sexual abuse of minors, according to the newspaper ‘ARA’. The victims accuse him of performing all kinds of touching, sexual games and masturbating next to minors for two decades that he was a physical education teacher at the Escola Barcelona de Les Corts. “I have lived with him for many years, he was one of my coaches and I never had any suspicions that this could happen, “said Xavi. The current coach of the Barça first team met the former technician in the lower ranks of the club. “I am not saying that it did not happen, but I had no suspicions,” he insisted, of a “complicated and delicate” issue of such personal affectation.

A group of former students has decided to file a complaint. On Friday already a girl did it and it is planned that during the next days other people will do it. Speaking to ‘Ara’, the accused denies any touching, but acknowledges that he would not repeat anything he did at that time. Some sixty testimonies have explained their experience as students in the 80s and 90s of an educator who went too far without the center intervening, leaving psychological consequences for both boys and girls affected.

From abuse to anorexia

El Periódico de Catalunya She has been able to speak with several of her former students in the 1980s. Maria explains that twice a year Benaiges sat and played while they showered. In addition to the trauma of the touching, was added the anger that they did not believe her and call her crazy. “The director told my parents that I was the rebel, that I had to go to a psychologist, that I had a bad head, which were my imaginations and I don’t know how many other things. My father hit me with a host that you can’t see, you don’t have anyone to defend you. And that made me isolate myself more and more, more and more shy and withdrawn. “One day Benaiges punished her in the dining room and told her not to move.”I ran away through the kitchen, jumping the fence at only 10 years old, running home with my mother scared to death. ” a picture of anorexia “because of all this” and she didn’t go to class for almost two years until she changed schools in eighth grade, following the advice that a teacher had given her mother. “Benaiges was a snake charmer and the center supported him,” he says. “He was an idol for many children and to convince them he told them that he was very good and they would put them into Barça as he tried with my brother.”

When seeing that the center did not take measures, some parents asked for a medical receipt so that their daughter would not have to go to physical education class. Based on therapy, Maria has been able to combat the trauma although he admits that he is still unable to pass the old school.

School reprimand for reporting it

“It was a surprise, we thought it had only happened to us and that’s it,” says Anna, knowing that it didn’t just happen in her promotion. “When we were at school and things got a little more unpleasant with the classmates, we talked about complaining in some way and the mother of one went to complain to the address. Nor they believed her, they said that the girl had lied and then they gave us a reprimand in class, that we were inventing, that we could not speak like that of a teacher. If two mothers from my class complained and ignored them, multiply it for all groups and years. There will have been hundreds of complaints in 20 years. It’s almost as bad collaborated to lengthen time and have more victims“, the Mint.

Anna had him as a teacher in the eighties and remembers how with the entry of puberty it made her uncomfortable that Benaiges’ insistence on being present while they showered. “There was an archway between the locker room area and the shower area and he would stand there and He made us take off the towel or he took it off us directly. “Without a towel, you don’t have to be ashamed,” he insisted. He would stare and we felt very violent. And he said no, that nothing was wrong and that we had to get used to it. So when class was over, we would go very quickly to the locker room, wet our heads and put on our towels to show that we had showered. ”

Elizabeth has not forgotten the day that Albert walked into the changing room and asked a colleague if Elizabeth had showered. Upon learning that he did not tell her to get in the shower. “He grabbed my hair and put me in the shower. It was very humiliating“. Relata, when she was 11 years old, and two other girls went to speak with Mari Carmen de Miguel, director between 1982 and 1991.” She listened to us, she was very perplexed but nothing happened. He was the king of the mambo“. Relive the shame that made him undress in front of the teacher, which he felt when they did the cartwheel on the plinth and took the opportunity to touch them. Just like when they did the Cooper test, 12 minutes of sprinting. While the boys did it, he counted the beats. Through her wrists, he did it by touching her left breast.

The change of the ‘Rhodes law’

“I was in psychological treatment, nobody believed me, they told me I was paranoid. Children have to be taken care of from sexual predators, “she says. At the beginning of the year she called a lawyer because she wanted to report him, but then they told her that her case had prescribed. The new Rhodes law, which came into force in June and extends the prescription to 50 years, has changed the scenario.