Several young women footballers have come forward and accused he manager of the Haitian Football Federation of sexually abusing them. Many people associated with the centre, including suspected victims and their relatives, have made the complaints to The Guardian.
Yves Jean-Bart, the president of the Fédération Haïtienne De Football (FHF) since 2000, pressured several players who have now left the centre to have sex with him, according to sources in Haiti. One was even forced to have an abortion. It is known that the reported events took place during the last 5 years.
“There’s a lady working there who is putting pressure on the girls to have sex with Dadou,” said one suspected victim to The Guardian. “He’ll see a pretty beautiful girl and he’ll send the lady to tell her she’ll be thrown out of the centre. She starts to cry and then the lady says: ‘The only way to fix this is to speak to Dadou.’ At that moment, the young girl has no choice but to cope with the sexual harassment.”
The athlete, one of Haiti’s rising stars playing professionally, reported that a Dadou friend was trying to rape her when she was living in the center in a suburb of Port-au-Prince, the capital of the country.
Another suspected victim said: “I am so scared. Dadou Jean-Bart is an extremely dangerous person. There’s a lot of people who want to talk, but they’re so scared, particularly parents, who still live in for Haiti.”
Popularly known as “Dadou,” Jean-Bart himself denies allegations that he has pressured many players to have sex at the Technique National Centre in Croix-des-Bouquets.
He stated that there weren’t “any complaint against the federation, the staff engaged in our academy, nor against my person. This kind of practice of sexual abuse is almost impossible in our camp centre given the physical structures, the principles of education and continuous awareness that we have put in place.”
He went on to say that it was “clearly a tactic to weaken the FHF, the president’s reputation and his family.”
