More than 50 current and former Canadian fencers have joined a call for a Canadian judicial inquiry into abuse in sports, saying that fear of retaliation kept them silent for nearly 20 years about abusive practices. The group, calling itself "Fencers for Change in Canada," stated in a letter to Sports Minister Pascale Saint-Onge, published online on Thursday, that "unfortunately, our shared experiences of abuse, neglect, and discrimination have united us. Over the past 20 years, we have suffered various forms of psychological, physical, sexual abuse, and misconduct."
The fencers claim that some of the perpetrators were coaches of Canadian teams and that the athletes who were abused were predominantly minors. They added that incidents of abuse occurred at tournaments sponsored by the Canadian Fencing Federation, from provincial levels to national and international competitions. The Canadian Fencing Federation did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Reuters.
Canada has been shaken by sports scandals over the past year, with thousands of athletes in gymnastics, skating, boxing, women's soccer, and rowing calling for the purification of sports from these practices. They demanded a national inquiry similar to an investigation conducted in 1989 into the use of performance-enhancing drugs in sports following the Ben Johnson scandal at the 1988 Seoul Olympics.
