In the last hours, Bianca tedesco, a basketball judge who participated in the Federal Tournament and the Argentine League, published a letter in which she revealed the hard times she lived throughout her career due to situations of sexual harassment and harassment and that led her to make the decision to move away from the arbitration.
On his Instagram account, Tedesco told everything he suffered in these years of career within the refereeing: “It makes my skin crawl to remember experiences, messages, audios, situations of sexual harassment that I naturalized believing ‘it is good that this happens’ or ‘if I want to continue directing I will have to endure it, there is no other’. In fact, there was another one, but the option of acknowledging what he had lived and learning from it in order to communicate it was too painful.
And continued: “If I speak today it is because I can’t take it anymore. 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 do well ”.
Tedesco explained that it has already made the corresponding criminal complaint, advised by its lawyers, but that it wanted to take advantage of the massiveness of social networks to tell its situation. In the last hours, the Argentine Basketball Confederation urgently activated its internal protocol after the accusation of the referee Bianca Tedesco and immediately suspended the accused, without ceasing to guarantee his right to defense.
In the statement it published, the CAB on its website says: “Having been notified by the National Sports Secretariat of the existence of a criminal complaint for sexual harassment in the Argentine arbitration (made by Judge Bianca Tedesco, in Justice and publicly), the Argentine Confederation urgently put into operation its protocol against gender violence and, guaranteeing the right of defense of the person denounced – not yet prosecuted -, immediately ordered the provisional suspension of the accused in the exercise of his functions in the field of the CAB and our basketball. The federations that are members of the entity were also informed. With this decision, It seeks to effectively and urgently protect the victim of the reported gender violence”.
The referee also expressed himself on social networks Fernando Sampietro, who published a series of tweets in support of Tedesco: “I do not want to be part of this complicit silence, and I want to repudiate it, beyond the fact that if there is a culprit and who it is, the justice will decide and show solidarity with my colleague @biancaatedesco. I want to do it without attacking or accusing, because I am nobody to do it. Just make it clear that I repudiate this type of situation, as a referee of the professional association, as a man and as a human being, that under no point of view I am an accomplice or part of this type of situation. I say it as my mother’s son, my wife’s husband and my daughter’s father ”.
In the letter, Tedesco explained: “I felt scared (a lot) for being exposed to being the quilombera, the tormentor, the whore, the resentful cake. Also for running out of my greatest source of income but, above all, for abandoning the boat of passion that sustained me from the moment when, at the age of 7, I entered a playing field and never wanted to leave. Even now I don’t want to either, but I have no choice. 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 subjugated for the benefit of a few or a few ”.
And he closed: “Today I have no choice but 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 I do, even if I cannot avoid it. At least, if it happens, let them know that they are not alone and that power exercised in an unequal and offensive way is oppression, it 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. My heart is torn, my eyes are swollen, and I have the peace of mind that I have given everything. Fortunately, today everything is in the hands of justice.
Tedesco spoke on UCU Radio and said that it will not stop in its struggle to make visible what women live in such macho environments: “Let it be understood that they are not going to shut us up any more. We are living in a moment where we can express what is happening and that these sufferings do not come to nothing. We will continue to repudiate what happens. Many do not know what is suffered in harassment ”.