A USA fencing squad has delivered a almighty protestation astatine the Tokyo Olympics - against their ain teammate.
Before their clash against Japan connected Friday, 3 members of the US men's épée squad - Jake Hoyle, Curtis McDowald and Yeisser Ramirez - wore pinkish masks.
They were protesting the antheral lasting close alongside them: Alen Hadzic, a arguable inclusion for the Games having faced aggregate allegations of intersexual assault. Hadzic, who was accommodated separately from his squad successful Tokyo, wore a achromatic mask.
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Hadzic did not really compete; helium was a squad alternate. The USA mislaid to Japan to spot ninth successful the lawsuit but made a beardown connection connected the satellite signifier denouncing unit against women.
Three women had accused Hadzic of intersexual assault. He was suspended by the US Centre for SafeSport connected June 2 but the prohibition was overturned, allowing him to spell to the Olympics. Yet USA Fencing was against his inclusion and helium was not invited with his teammates.
Hadzic was treated arsenic a virtual outcast contempt his presence. He was taxable to a 'safety plan' that included being barred from grooming alongside pistillate fencers, made to put his ain question to Tokyo, barred from the Olympic colony and alternatively forced to enactment successful a hotel.
He tried to person those restrictions removed but failed. BuzzFeed reported that his teammates sent a missive to USA Fencing, signed by the full roster, that Hadzic's beingness successful the Olympic colony would marque the consciousness unsafe.
"We are pissed disconnected that this is adjacent a happening we had to woody with," an Olympic fencer, who filed a ailment of predatory behaviour against Hadzic, told BuzzFeed from the Games. "He's been protected again and again."
The intersexual battle allegations subordinate to incidents from 2013 to 2015.
"I deliberation 1 lawsuit is capable for you to not beryllium allowed to vie astatine the f--king Olympics," 1 of his accusers anonymously told USA Today. "It truly makes you question however acold idiosyncratic needs to spell successful bid for them not to beryllium capable to compete.''
Hadzic's attorney, Michael Palma, claimed that his lawsuit has "never been accused of rape".
Jack Wiener, an lawyer who represented 1 of the complainants earlier SafeSport, claimed that Hadzic and Palma were "slithering" astir the explanation of rape nether the law.
"Mr Palma himself refers present to a 'nonconsensual intersexual incident'," Wiener said, per the Montclair Local News. "He evades admitting whether Mr Hadzic was accused of having enactment with women without their consent."
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