The Argentine basketball world was shaken in the last hours with the heartbreaking complaint of the referee Bianca tedesco, who recounted in a letter published on his social networks the hard moments that he lived throughout his career due to situations of sexual harassment and harassment and that led him to make the decision to withdraw from arbitration.
“It makes my skin crawl remembering experiences, messages, audios, situations of sexual harassment that I naturalized believing ‘it’s okay for this to happen’ or ‘if I want to continue directing I’m going to have to put up with it, there’s no other choice’. Actually, there was another, but the option of acknowledging what he had lived and learning from that to communicate it was too painful, “said Tedesco, a prominent national basketball judge, who came to referee in the Federal Tournament and the Argentina League.
“If I speak today, it is because I can’t take any more. Because my mental health went through states that are not directly proportional to the demands of my job, but to the harassment and sexual harassment that I received in a clearly macho and unfair environment for those of us who only wanted to work and get it right, “he continued.
Who usually plays in basketball in the City of Buenos Aires and also in some national categories said that he had already made the corresponding criminal complaint, advised by his lawyers, but that he wanted to take advantage of the massiveness of social networks to vent and tell his experience.
“Once again, the system prompted me to make a decision but, fortunately, this time it is based on my ideals. And, yes, I can say that it leaves me calm, but that it breaks my heart. , they appropriated my dreams when I slept, they also woke me up from the tortuous reality of which I was a part for almost 13 years. I had planned a retirement near my 50 years, at least. But for that it was a sine qua non condition to continue being silenced. , subdued, turned off and living for others, “he wrote.
“I felt scared (a lot) for being exposed to being the quilombera, the tormentor, the whore, the resentful cake. Also for being left without my greatest source of income but, above all, for abandoning the ship of passion that sustained me since the moment when, when I was only 7 years old, I entered a game rectangle and I never wanted to leave. Even now I don’t want to, but I have no other option, “he added. “Unfortunately there are those who continue to maintain that oppression, harassment and a lot of mental damage is how projects, ideas and systems are carried out. I can no longer be part of that, I no longer conceive of being subjected for the benefit of a few or of a few “.
“There are those who continue to maintain that oppression, harassment and a lot of mental damage is how the projects are carried out,” said Tedesco. Instagram photo @biantedesco
Tedesco pointed squarely at the top of the Argentine arbitration and affirmed that they made him believe “that the idea is to build based on work, but those of us inside know that people who sleep in the same bed or who do favors for the king really come. of the dome “.
And he closed: “Today I have no choice but to step aside, at least for a while. From where I am, I will always build so that other people do not suffer the same as me even though I cannot avoid it. At least, if it happens, that Know that you are not alone and that power exercised in an unequal and offensive way is oppression, is abuse and harassment. Those who knew me in my work know that passion, as well as respect and work were always and were superlative. I have the heart torn, swollen eyes and the tranquility of having given everything. Fortunately, today everything is in the hands of justice. “
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