A USA fencing team has delivered a powerful protest at the Tokyo Olympics – against their own teammate.
Before their clash against Japan on Friday, three members of the US men’s épée team – Jake Hoyle, Curtis McDowald and Yeisser Ramirez – wore pink masks.
They were protesting the man standing right alongside them: Alen Hadzic, a controversial inclusion for the Games having faced multiple allegations of sexual assault. Hadzic, who was accommodated separately from his team in Tokyo, wore a black mask.
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Hadzic did not actually compete; he was a team alternate. The USA lost to Japan to place ninth in the event but made a strong statement on the world stage denouncing violence against women.
Three women had accused Hadzic of sexual assault. He was suspended by the US Centre for SafeSport on June 2 but the ban was overturned, allowing him to go to the Olympics. Yet USA Fencing was against his inclusion and he was not welcome with his teammates.
Hadzic was treated as a virtual outcast despite his presence. He was subject to a ‘safety plan’ that included being barred from training alongside female fencers, made to arrange his own travel to Tokyo, barred from the Olympic village and instead forced to stay in a hotel.
He tried to have those restrictions removed but failed. BuzzFeed reported that his teammates sent a letter to USA Fencing, signed by the entire roster, that Hadzic’s presence in the Olympic village would make the feel unsafe.
“We are pissed off that this is even a thing we had to deal with,” an Olympic fencer, who filed a complaint of predatory behaviour against Hadzic, told BuzzFeed from the Games. “He’s been protected again and again.”
The sexual assault allegations relate to incidents from 2013 to 2015.
“I think one case is enough for you to not be allowed to compete at the f–king Olympics,” one of his accusers anonymously told USA Today. “It really makes you question how far someone needs to go in order for them not to be able to compete.”
Hadzic’s attorney, Michael Palma, claimed that his client has “never been accused of rape”.
Jack Wiener, an attorney who represented one of the complainants before SafeSport, claimed that Hadzic and Palma were “slithering” around the definition of rape under the law.
“Mr Palma himself refers here to a ‘nonconsensual sexual incident’,” Wiener said, per the Montclair Local News. “He evades admitting whether Mr Hadzic was accused of having sex with women without their consent.”
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