Earlier on Monday could The football channel tell that an all-Swedish star is stopped from national team play by his national federation after accusations of sexual harassment were made against him.
The club’s highest-ranking official did not know anything about what happened when Fotbollskanalen contacted him on Monday morning. Then he asked to return after talking to the player.
The club has now published a statement on the matter. In it, it is confirmed that the player has reached a settlement with the victim and a club leader says that they take the situation “very seriously even if the case in the legal sense is closed”.
He further says:
– We have an ongoing dialogue with the player about this to investigate which way we can take forward. We want to clearly mark that we distance ourselves from his actions and all similar behaviors.
It was in the autumn of 2017 that the harassment took place, according to the woman concerned. She has now chosen to tell about the incident in the media because the association whose national team to which the player belongs has tried to silence it. The union president recently said in an interview that they have never received any reports of suspected sexual crimes that have been committed by national team players – and that made the woman react.
The woman claims that she told the association that she had been sexually harassed by a national team player and that the association offered her to sign a confidentiality agreement that would prevent her from talking about what she had experienced. She declined that offer.
After she made her accusations openly, the union president has backed away from her previous statement and called it a “mistake”, according to media in the country. The situation has led to big headlines and it has shaken the union considerably. For example, the chairman has been forced to resign.
The woman says that the day after the incident she went to the police and reported the player, but the police investigation never led to anything as the parties must have settled the matter on their own. The woman says that she had a meeting with the player where he apologized and that he also paid damages to her. She claims that the player did not question her story, but admitted what she told.
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