In the difficult but irresistible path that thousands of young Argentines undertake to become professional soccer players, that dream that ranges from becoming the new Diego Maradona or Lionel Messi to getting out of the poverty that shakes 63% of children and adolescents in the country , there is no shortage of dangers. For example, being exposed to possible sexual assault. A recent ruling by the local justice system confirmed that 15 underage footballers from the training divisions of different clubs, most of them from Independiente, were victims of at least four abusers between 2017 and 2018.
Although it is the first case of national impact, the sexual exploitation of young players is not limited to a club or an isolated incident. According to specialists, the aggressors especially target children who move from small towns to big cities to join the youth ranks of First Division teams. Between the distance between adolescents and their parents, their economic vulnerability and the mandate to succeed in football, in addition to their youth, abusers take action.
On the last business day of 2023, Friday, December 29, a soccer referee, Martín Bustos, was sentenced to 12 years in prison for sexual abuse, sexual exploitation and corruption of minors against Independiente youth players and other clubs. Also in the same oral trial, which closed the case that affected the team that won the most editions of the Copa Libertadores, three other people investigated – Juan Manuel Díaz Vallone, Alejandro Dal Cin and Silvio Fleytas – were punished for the same crimes with sentences between 12 and 10 years in prison. The remaining two defendants, Leonardo Cohen Arazi and Alberto Amadeo Ponte, currently do not have a trial date.
Although originally there was talk of a pedophile network, the six people investigated – people from the football “environment”, tournament organizers, public relations people or relatives of representatives – harassed the boys separately, without relation to each other, which speaks of the vulnerability to which young athletes are exposed. The prosecution of the case, led by María Soledad Garibaldi, reported that 52% of the boys who testified as witnesses (99 out of 189, from eight clubs in Buenos Aires) received a proposal for sex in exchange for money. The case includes 42 acts of abuse involving 15 victims, most of them who trained and slept in the Independiente pension.
The case began in March 2018 and was initially classified as “sexual abuse and promotion and facilitation of prostitution.” “The issue comes to light because a 14-year-old boy from the Independiente youth teams told the area psychologist, Ariel Ruiz, that one of his classmates had started to have more money. It may seem like something unimportant, but they were gifts for being abused,” Francisco reconstructs. Panqui Molina, co-author of Red Alert. Who cares about the Inferiors?a book published in December 2018 and whose title plays with the color of the Independiente shirt.
Immediately, Ruiz and Fernando Langenauer, then coordinator of the Independiente boarding house, where 53 boys between 13 and 17 years old slept, all arriving in Buenos Aires from different parts of the country, gathered the boarders and explained to them that there was a crime of through. “In their innocence and their need, the boys did not know that they were victims. Because, furthermore, the abuse did not occur in a context of explicit violence, neither physical nor verbal, but rather of supposed friendship,” explains Pedro Molina, Panqui Molina's brother and co-author of Red Alert. “Contact is through social networks. They know who are the most vulnerable, who are not going to count. There is a perverse knowledge of the victims to choose them,” adds Panqui Molina.
The gifts for the boys after each encounter with their abusers, always in private apartments, took different forms. It could be cash, about 800 Argentine pesos, the equivalent then of 40 dollars. Or attentions for everyday life, from surcharges on the SUBE card, a plastic card to pay for the fare on public transportation in Buenos Aires, to longer trips to their hometowns to visit relatives. And, also, gifts for the boys' soccer career, such as new sports shoes or more frequent attendance at hair salons and tattoo parlors. Being a footballer is not only about looking like the best on the field but also about imitating their image.
“The system established an idea in football, that one has to bank [soportar] all. And the truth is that 99 out of every 100 kids from the lower levels do not make it to First Division,” say the Molinas, who followed the case from the beginning. “The players say that they experience football with stress. They are afraid of injuries, of being free at the end of the year and of not responding to their families, who in some cases expect a change in their lives. In the clubs there are boarding houses to house 100 kids who are far from their families and with certain economic vulnerability. That is why they become a perfect target for child abusers,” says Panqui Molina.
Trust link
At the end of March 2018, Ruiz, Langenauer and the youth who trained and slept in the Independiente boarding house – not all of them abused, but many witnesses – went to court. Boys from other clubs in Buenos Aires joined. “Paying a child with money or goods in exchange for sex is sexual exploitation,” said Garibaldi, the prosecutor who a few days later requested the arrest of Bustos and five others involved, all accused of aggravated sexual abuse and corruption of minors. Through the chats, it was found that Bustos had taken two players, one of them 14 years old, to his apartment. The former referee generated a bond of trust with his victims, even though he did not know them. On March 17, 2018 he started a conversation with a 14-year-old Independiente player through Facebook:
—Hello, crack. Thanks for accepting.
-How's it going? It's no big deal.
—We can get together to have a drink and talk about football if you want. Obviously I invite you.
—Great, yes, yes. When I'm there [San Isidro, a 20 kilómetros de Avellaneda, sede de Independiente] I'll let you know and we'll get together to have a drink and chat, very friendly.
—No, bastard. I'll go to wherever you are and we'll have something there. I didn't tell you to come to my house either, haha.
—Ah, perfect then.
—When we know each other and have more trust, there is no problem. I even give you the key to my house.
-Hahaha. Very good.
—You seem very cool to me, kid. (…) Of course, I ask you not to spread too much that you have a referee friend because it does not look good for a referee and a player to be friends off the field. Could be? Can you bench me on that one?
—Thank you, so do you. Rest assured that everything is here.
—I like you better and better. Hahaha.
Bustos and the other five defendants were detained for six months and were released in September 2018, when the case went from “sexual exploitation” to “corruption of minors,” while the oral trial was delayed until December 2023. However, the The referee, who until his arrest had become an assistant in Second Division matches and a fourth referee in the First Division – and therefore was not known to the public – did not distance himself from the youth players. In May 2019 he created an Instagram account, @losmasajesdeportivos, and recruited youth from various clubs to offer them “relieving and relaxing massage services.”
A 14-year-old youth from the Newell's youth team, in Rosario, became suspicious of a message he rec
eived: “Hello crack, how are you doing? My name is Martin Luther [nombre falso], I am a former soccer player and currently I am a sports masseuse. “I wanted to offer you a session so you can get to know my service.” The boy, a native of the interior of the province of Santa Fe and resident in the Rosario club's pension, referred the conversation to the team psychologist, who continued the conversation with the referee. They agreed to meet “in a quiet place” in Rosario but Bustos fell into his own trap: the Rosario Sexual Crimes Unit went to the scene and arrested him. In the apartment, which was far from being an office, intimate gels and condoms were found.
In June 2019, Bustos was charged by the Rosario justice system with preventive detention for 90 days for the crime of grooming, pedophile deception, with the “purpose of harming the sexual integrity of the adolescent.” From then until December 29, when he was sentenced to 12 years in prison—which he can serve at home until the sentence becomes final—the referee continued traveling through Argentina.
Without the impact of a club like Independiente, other cases of sexual abuse of minors in football are repeated from time to time although, between the silence of the system and the modesty of the boys, they do not reach justice. An exception was in 2017, when the mother of a minor who played at the Mac Allister Sports Club, in La Pampa (600 kilometers west of Buenos Aires) denounced coach Héctor Kruber. “Mom, the coach wanted to touch our whistle,” her son wrote to her during a school trip. The president of the club, Patricio Mac Allister (Alexis's uncle, current player for the national team and Liverpool in England), separated Kruber and sent an audio to the parents: “I am in the football environment, and this happens everywhere. . Even though it hurts me. I saw these situations in five clubs.” Journalist complaints indicate that in some Ascenso teams, such as El Porvenir, a coach even asked players to spread a cream on different parts of their bodies.
“When we were world champions, I looked at so many kids who went through pensions and who perhaps experienced it firsthand or saw someone who suffered it and I thought, what is the price that has to be paid?”, reflected Langenauer, the coordinator of the pension of Independiente who brought the case to justice, after the conviction of Bustos and three other abusers, the first step against sexual exploitation in the training divisions of Argentine football.
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