I have no mixed feelings about Vanessa. How was she to know her partner was a child sex criminal?!??!! Please don't paint her with the same brush or even a brush. Good for her to move on and get away from the darkness. It was inevitable. I mean, can you imagine her having to fake her way through anything romantic or sexual with him after his crimes? PASS. BYE.
After spending a large portion of my time in grad school studying feminist legal theory, the answer to this is unfortunately yes.
Maybe she didn't know, but I think it's more likely she did. Maybe she enabled him, or maybe she tried to ignore it, or maybe she tried to prevent the abuse going on at their rink.
I have absolutely no idea. Part of my brain thinks that she could have spoken out, even in an incredibly vague way, but I understand why there would be internal and external pressures not to.
People make sweeping assumptions about how others react when they are involved in a situation with abuse. The one (and hopefully only) time I served on a jury, we got into an extended argument after another juror said a partner would never stay with an abusive partner. I asked her what she thought about O.J. Simpson and Nicole Brown, and she said, "That was different because they were married." My head almost exploded.
Even if I knew Vanessa, I wouldn't assume anything about what she knew or didn't. Logic doesn't operate in an objective manner, especially when there is a cocktail of forces like age difference, power imbalance, pressure on athletes to succeed, maintaining a veneer of team morale, coaches protecting athletes or vice/versa, etc.
So my reaction is "bye" but also my thoughts are with the survivors and not Vanessa.
sport24.lefigaro.fr
