Stefania Fogliata sentenced by the sports court to a one-year disqualification – Corriere.it

Something is moving on the front of the repression of abuses in Italian gymnastics. Thursday the FGI Federal Court

disqualified the coach from Brescia Stefania Fogliata for a year and banned the Accademia della Rhythmic Nemesi of Calcinato, which she founded and directed, for eight months for strict liability in violations of the Federal Code of Ethics and the Coni Code of Sports Behavior.

This is the harshest sanction in a proceeding for ill-treatment in the discipline: in the past, the FIG had admitted many technicians to plea bargaining with very light penalties. The facts contested by the coach (who follows some “butterflies” at national and international level) are omitted in the reasons but had been widely reported to the press by a twelve-year-old former student who had told how the “insults, offenses, punishments, humiliations were the order of the day”. During the hearing at the federal court Fogliata, who is under criminal investigation by the Brescia prosecutor’s office, had only admitted “to having spoken abruptly and inappropriately with the parents of the athletes”. The disqualification was timely despite the fact that the sports court does not yet have the papers of the criminal proceeding available.

Something then also moves on artistic front. The Federal Court (still presided over by Marco Leoni) has just ordered the precautionary suspension of the coach Eleonora Gatti, coach of several international level athletes at the Green-and-white Imola Artistic Gymnasticsas “recipient of multiple and converging complaints of inappropriate behavior towards underage students, both verbal and physical, also formalized before the Prosecutor of Bologna”.

A witness considered credible by the sports magistrates spoke of “daily screams and intimidating attitudes with little girls who often burst into tears”. In the meantime, the next hearing of the proceeding against the ct is scheduled for May 12 blue Emanuela Maccarani and her assistant Olga Tishina.