Haiti received support from FIFA to build a football center.
There, football chief Yves Jean Barth ruled the Reign of Terror. Children were raped and players and staff were handed over as “gifts” to FIFA delegates, among others – and then-president of the organization Sepp Blatter.
This was reported by Norwegian football magazine Josimar in a review.
Since both boys and girls have reached the age of 14, they can become eligible to live and receive football education at the FIFA Goal Centre, known as The Farm.
Football was seen as a way out of poverty. But instead the road has become a nightmare, as Norwegian football magazine Josimar describes.
Players’ passports were confiscated and eventually led by FA President Yves-Jean Bart, employees and children were sexually abused and used in prostitution when footballers and powerful politicians visited the center or the country.
– You came to Haiti and then you got a girl from the Federation to your hotel. That’s how things worked, says Erneso Lawrence, former captain of the national team and president of the players’ union.
“Be a nightmare”
One of the few who dared to speak openly about what happened.
The Guardian revealed that Yves Jean Bart was sexually exploited in 2020, and he was subsequently suspended from all football matches by FIFA’s ethics committee.
But according to Josemar’s review, FIFA had previously chosen to look in another direction, despite knowing what the situation was like. A total of 34 victims of rape, death threats and extortion have been identified at The Ranch, and according to legal documents obtained by Josimar, at least one person committed suicide as a result of the act. Many others now live their lives as prostitutes.
– The three months I spent there was a nightmare. I was 14 when it happened and one night I just ran out of there with a few friends, says one victim who was one of several boys who were said to have been raped by the country’s Sports Minister Evans Leskofleir and other men in the Football Association.
A total of 20 members of the union, led by Yves Jean Bart, are said to be involved in the crimes.
“It is impossible not to know”
And it was the most powerful football player in the world who took advantage of that.
In 2013, he was in Haiti to see how the reconstruction work went after the great earthquake of 2011. Then his good friend Yves-Jean Barthes confirmed that “Blatter got blue pills” and then forced a union employee to go to his hotel room at the Oasis Hotel.
Someone in the union’s medical staff – who bought the “blue pills” – remembers how proud Yves-Jean Bart was afterwards.
– He told the story to everyone in the name of the weak employee. He said, “President Blatter loves Haitian women! I fixed one for him.”
Josemar asked FIFA to comment on a number of questions but received only a general answer that they did not “Talks about the ongoing investigations” But this man It takes all allegations of abuse seriously.
also Sepp Blatter He received questions through his spokesperson but did not return to the newspaper.
– What I can’t understand is how FIFA couldn’t see what happened here. We are talking about two decades of abuse. It was a bad secret here in Haiti. How and why FIFA and CONCACAF can close their eyes. One of the victims tells Josemar that it is impossible not to know.