After one and a half years, the Independent Review Commission of the German Tennis Federation (DTB) presented its report on violence in German tennis. Accordingly, there have been at least four cases of interpersonal violence in the past 40 years. The commission also sees evidence of “a large number of other cases”.
In March 2023, SZ, NDR and “Sportschau” published that the former DTB vice president Dirk Hordorff was said to have repeatedly sexually harassed players he looked after as a manager or coach in at least two cases. They were the Indian tennis professional Sriram Balaji and the former young professional Maximilian Abel. Both spoke extensively about their experiences during the research. Others affected had described similar things anonymously.
Hordorff denied the allegations. After the allegations became known, the DTB asked the former tennis official to resign from his positions. In May 2023, the DTB also commissioned an independent commission to evaluate the specific allegations and also examine how the DTB could improve its system for preventing and dealing with violence in the future. Hordorff died of heart disease in August 2023.
On Tuesday, the DTB published a summary of the investigation. As a result, the three-member committee was able to speak to ten people, three of whom were “potentially directly affected by interpersonal violence”. The DTB does not publish the report itself, which is 147 pages long – in order to protect the privacy of those who provided information in it.
The commission complains that during the period in which the cases occurred, the DTB did not have a protection concept to prevent violence. This encouraged cases of violence. A lack of awareness and association structures would also have facilitated abuse of power and violence by employees and tennis coaches. Exactly which structures the Commission is criticizing is not stated in the summary.
In the meantime, the DTB has introduced a protection concept that meets the requirements of the German Olympic Sports Confederation (DOSB). However, the Commission considers “the standard of protection achieved in this way to be insufficient”. The committee presented the DTB with recommendations for improving violence prevention. The DTB wanted to follow these, it was said.
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