Venezuelan Australian womens national soccer team players allege years of sexual abuse

SYDNEY â€" Elite Venezuelan and Australian female soccer players have gone public with allegations of harassment and sexual abuse, as the sport’s latest #MeToo reckoning goes global, triggered by revelations from the U.S. National Women’s Soccer League.

Twenty-four of Venezuela’s top soccer players, including Atlético Madrid forward Deyna Castellanos, on Tuesday condemned what they said was years of “abuse and harassment, physical, psychological and sexual” by former coach Kenneth Zseremeta.

In a statement posted on social media by Castellanos on Tuesday, the players claimed the abuse took place from 2013 to at least 2017 â€" when Zseremeta was fired as coach of the under-20 women’s national team, with Venezuelan soccer authorities citing the squad’s poor performance. At the time, Zseremeta reportedly claimed that his players were suffering from malnutrition in the crisis-wracked nation.

The statement said that a Venezuelan player in 2020 told teammates that she had been sexually abused since age 14 by the coach. They did not identify the victim.

Venezuela’s attorney general announced on Twitter that a prosecutor had been assigned to investigate.

Efforts to reach Zseremeta via phone were unsuccessful. Emails to a soccer agency that listed him as a client as recently as Monday were not returned.

Venezuelan Football Federation President Jorge Giménez tweeted his support Wednesday.

“We are ready to enforce the rights of our players,” he said. “It’s time to fight for respect and equality.” The federation did not say whether it was aware of the allegations before they were made public.

Panama-born Zseremeta was a successful coach for the Venezuelan national team for almost a decade. He has also coached Panama’s women’s national team.

Following the Venezuelan player’s account, other teammates also alleged abusive behavior by Zseremeta. These included requests for massages, questions the players felt were abnormal and other inappropriate behavior, the statement said. LGBTQ players were constantly questioned by Zseremeta about their sexual orientation, the players alleged.

“There were threats and manipulations to tell the parents of the players about their sexual orientation,” the players wrote. “We never felt we had the tools to speak and get support, because the influence and power of this person in our lives was authoritarian.”

The Venezuelan players’ statement came shortly after reporting from the Athletic that an NWSL coach, the North Carolina Courage’s Paul Riley, had sexually coerced multiple players, as well as reporting by The Washington Post about verbal and emotional abuse by the former coach of the Washington Spirit.

NWSL Commissioner Lisa Baird resigned last week after claims that the league did not address allegations of sexual coercion, while Spirit CEO and controlling owner Steve Baldwin stepped down Tuesday.

Castellanos is one of Latin America’s best known female soccer stars. She played college soccer at Florida State University and was named one of the world’s best players in 2017. In a separate personal statement, she thanked former NWSL players Sinead Farrelly and Mana Shim for sharing their stories. Both have said they had been abused by Riley, who was fired Thursday.

“The injustices that our teammates are experiencing in the United States are issues that all professional players (regardless of gender or league) should be paying attention to and taking seriously,” Castellanos wrote.

She wrote in her statement that the Athletic report on Riley brought back memories she had lived through or heard about from colleagues, whom Castellanos said had stayed silent out of fear of retribution.

“For a long time, we had all convinced ourselves that these experiences were normal,” she said. “I had assumed that this machista environment built on exploitive control and degradation was the price a woman athlete had to pay to be a professional player.”

In Australia, soccer authorities have urged players to make formal complaints after one of the country’s top international goal scorers alleged she had been groomed and harassed by senior players early in her career.

Lisa de Vanna, who played 150 games for her country, told Australia’s Daily Telegraph newspaper in an article published Wednesday that she experienced abuse and bullying when she joined a national women’s squad at age 17. She also detailed a sexual act that was performed on her in 2001.

“I fought my way off the floor kicking and screaming. They thought it was funny,” she said. “Have I been sexually harassed? Yes. Have I been bullied? Yes. Ostracized? Yes. Have I seen things that have made me uncomfortable? Yes.”

A spokesman for Football Australia said the organization had met with De Vanna, although he said the specific allegations made in the newspaper article were not raised with officials in that meeting.

“Australian football takes a zero-tolerance approach to any conduct which breaches the standards and values expected of people involved in the game,” he said, encouraging De Vanna and any other players and staff to “formally bring forward any claims.”

Herrero reported from Caracas, Venezuela. Molly Hensley-Clancy in Washington contributed to this report.

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