The alleged case of continued sexual assault of a minor former Lointek Gernika basketball player, at the hands of her former coach, has put on the table the long road that still needs to be covered to put a stop to abuse in the sporting field. The events go back more than two decades in time, they were reported in June 2022 and became publicly known this Sunday; However, the club, which was aware of the case, has not acted forcefully until the issue reached the media. Meanwhile, some 2,800 people have gathered in Gernika to show their closeness to the victim.
The case came to light this Sunday through a report published in El País, which reported on the complaint filed by a 38-year-old woman for a crime of continuous sexual assault of which, according to the complaint, she was a victim between 1998 and 2001. The accused is Mario López, who trained her from the age of 13, first at school and then at Lointek. The complaint states that he threatened, controlled and frightened her, as well as multiple episodes of sexual violence: anal penetration, multiple fellatios and constant touching.
The young woman left basketball when she started university, when she moved to Bilbao. Mario López, meanwhile, began a successful sports career in those years that would lead him, after passing through the lower categories, to become the coach of the first team, today in the highest category of Spanish basketball, the Endesa League, as well as to become also in the national under-16, under-18 and under-19 team.
In 2022, López’s alleged victim decided to definitively reopen the case that had tormented her for almost 25 years and that had destroyed her life. She hired a lawyer and on June 13 of last year she filed a complaint against him being her basketball coach during her teenage years. Six weeks later it was learned that, after 11 years in the first team, Mario López would not coach the Lointek first team due to “health problems.”
Last summer, however, Lointek was preparing López’s return to the bench, after almost a year away. In parallel, last June, the Gernika Feminist Network became aware of the case and requested a meeting with the club.
On June 28, they met and conveyed two requests to him: that they “urgently” remove López from the summer camp for girls that was held those days and, secondly, that he not continue as coach of the first team.
After some hesitation, the club announced at the end of the summer that López would not continue as coach, a decision that he transferred to the municipality’s Feminist Network. Shortly after, however, they learned that he would continue in the club’s organizational chart as sports director. Mario López, in fact, was not removed from the club until a few hours ago, when the case came to light, so the decisions about how this case has been managed by the club have caused obvious indignation.
The information about what happened within the club between June and September is confusing. Although the issue did not come out publicly, it is evident that there were many internal movements and one player, Angie Bjorklund, even left the club due to her discomfort with López’s continuity, something that she has confirmed in the last few hours.
From Lointek they point out that they were not aware of the seriousness of the complaint and that López had informed them that it was a complaint of sexual harassment to which the relevance was diminished.
“Until the publication of this information, this Board of Directors has never been aware that the complaint was for a crime of continuous sexual assault of a minor. This Board of Directors has neither the complaint nor the complaint in this case and what Mario López conveyed to us is that it was a harassment complaint,” they indicated this Monday.
Lointek also points out that “once the scope and content of the accusation was known through the media, it seems evident that when the club makes the decision in the preseason to relegate Mario López to internal management tasks in the sports field “These were insufficient measures.” “The club regrets and apologizes for the errors in this management,” they indicate.
The Lointek Gernika has also committed to “reinforce and adopt the appropriate measures so that the child and adolescent protection systems function within the entity”, and has appointed two people to guarantee these mechanisms.
From the municipality’s Feminist Network, however, they are very critical of how the board has acted. Arlette Apraiz, one of its representatives, considers that “complicity” has reigned, an “active complicity, not of the club, which is made up of many people, but of the people who have maintained dialogue with us and who represent the club ”. “They wanted to keep the topic silent, make us dizzy and keep everything the same,” she says.
Likewise, Apraiz has asked “not to enter into speculation about the identity of the victim.” “We must protect the victim and move the focus away from her. The focus must be on the aggressor and the accomplices who have sought impunity,” she says.
Meanwhile, on Monday afternoon, an AMPA rally took place at the Allende Salazar school, where, according to the victim’s story, the abuse began in 1998. Members of the communities of other schools in the town has joined the rally, presided over by a banner that read “Haurren kontrako indarkeriarik ez! Against sexual violence in childhood.”
In addition, a demonstration in which some 2,800 people participated has toured the streets of the town, led by a banner with the text Guk sinisten zaitugu (We believe you).