Since March 2023, an external abuse review commission has been working to shed even more light on the abysses of the German Swimming Association (DSV). On Wednesday, the group led by Cologne sports sociologist Bettina Rulofs announced its results, almost eight months later than planned. The delay also occurred because of the complex hearing of abuse victims and witnesses, which is understandable when it comes to people’s privacy.
The report is 120 pages long and is based on 27 individual interviews with those affected. The commission also evaluated more than 350 pages from the DSV archive on how the umbrella organization and the regional associations deal with sexual violence. Their starting point was the ARD documentary “Abused – Sexualized Violence in German Swimming” from August 2022, in which various cases of sexualized violence and abuse of power in swimming became public. Including the case surrounding world-class diver <a href="https://www.archysport.com/2022/08/jan-hempel-accuses-coach-werner-langer-of-sexual-abuse/" title="Jan Hempel accuses coach Werner Langer of sexual abuse“>Jan Hempel, who accused his coach of massively abusing him in the eighties and nineties.
:Würzburg open water federal base will be closed
The traditional location has produced gold winners and top swimmers for many years. Now it is no longer allowed to be a federal center – that apparently also has to do with the Stefan Lurz case.
The case was the focus of the commission, which concluded “that Jan Hempel was sexually abused for years by his former trainer.” Hempel reported on ARD about a martyrdom lasting one and a half decades. His trainer Werner Langer, whom he accuses, can no longer be questioned; he committed suicide in 2001. Hempel, who emphasized that high-ranking DSV officials found out about the attacks early on but did nothing, was compensated 600,000 euros by the DSV a year ago. The commission comes to the conclusion that there must have been informants, “that at least the national diving coach at the time (…) knew about the incidents. Jan Hempel could have been given sufficient support at this point and sanction measures could have been initiated against the coach.”
The Hempel case is not an isolated case, but rather an example of the immeasurable suffering caused by acts that could be committed because the system was designed for it, because there were and still are silence cartels. “The structures in some of the cases examined invited people with intent to commit crimes to commit abuse of power without being discovered,” says sports sociologist Rulofs. The isolation of the locker room, the dependent relationship with the coach, the helplessness and disbelief of the parents when their child gathers all the courage and reveals himself to them: all of this plays into it.
In the Würzburg case, the commission finds words of praise for the DSV
Further cases were investigated by the commission, including from diving, outside of Jan Hempel’s training group. According to the descriptions, it was about sexual abuse that those affected had experienced in the past as children and young people at the hands of their trainers. For reasons of privacy, the commission does not name any names in the 19-page summary of its report.
In the case of former federal base coach Stefan Lurz, who was ultimately sentenced to a suspended sentence and was able to work in Würzburg for a long time despite recurring allegations, the commission paid attention to the DSV’s investigation – and also found words of praise. “It became clear that the DSV has developed and optimized structures for dealing with incidents of sexual violence since 2010.”
Overall, the report gives the DSV a rather poor report – and speaks of structural deficiencies in the prevention, prosecution and sanctioning of sexual violence in German swimming. Accordingly, further measures are needed to protect swimmers from abuse. The commission is proposing, among other things, a “glass swimming pool” that would use “transparency, collegial teamwork and supervision” to ensure that coaches do not work alone and in isolation with their protégés. “We urgently recommend that the DSV self-critically question which training bases and in which clubs such violence-promoting structures still persist and to put the integrity and well-being of the athletes first,” says sports sociologist Rulofs.
In addition, the DSV statutes and regulations would have to be adjusted – also because concrete sanctions in the event of sexual violence as well as immediate measures on how to deal with the first indications of sexual violence before the conclusion of disciplinary proceedings were missing from the paragraphs. “Anyone who has committed sexual offenses has no place in swimming. Our goal is to make the necessary changes to the regulations by the end of 2025,” announced DSV President David Profit.
What is certain is that something has started to move
Board member Wolfgang Rupieper said: “It is an alarming result that swimming has had difficulty consistently excluding sex offenders in the past.” The central finding is the “need for a zero-tolerance policy towards sex offenders in swimming,” wrote the DSV.
What is certain is that something has started to move – also through well-known cases like that of Jan Hempel. Just a week ago, the German Olympic Sports Confederation presented the Safe Sport Code, a model set of rules that is intended to help clubs and associations better combat interpersonal violence and sanction perpetrators more consistently. And at the beginning of 2025, as part of the “Safe Clubs” research project, an online training tool developed by the Cologne Sports University will be launched that sports clubs can use free of charge.
None of this sounds like the zero-tolerance policy that the DSV is now imposing on itself after many years of looking the other way. And for many measures it is unclear whether they are really suitable in practice. But the main thing here is one thing: breaking down structures, creating transparency – and an environment that is so stable that abuse is no longer possible.
