Benaiges’ trail of abuse points to the Unió Esportiva Sants

The accusations of sexual abuse allegedly committed by Albert Benaiges, totem of the quarry of the F.C.Barcelona, pile on his past as a gym teacher in the Barcelona School. In the last three days, there have been dozens of alumni of this school who have begun to settle accounts with traumatic memories or, in the best of cases, difficult to digest as they are lived during childhood. There are so many because Benaiges was a teacher of notable ancestry in a school through which he wandered freely during the eighties and nineties. However, at the moment there are no complaints that concern the following two decades, when he took charge of Barça’s grassroots football.

Perhaps that is also why, while in the WhatsApp groups of former students of the school the case of Benaiges has not caused surprise, it has done so in another similar group but made up of former Barça players with more than 70 users. Most had had him as a coach in lower categories. One of them tells EL PERIÓDICO that he was at his command for the first time when he was 9 years old, in the Barça youth. He even went to eat at Albert’s house one day, but it does not evoke any strange gestures. Neither he nor his fellow promoters present in the whatsapp chat. Of course, as a result of what happened, he wonders if the kisses he gave them on the cheeks had some other type of intention. To date, there have been no cases detected in La Masia, but Benaiges’ trail of abuse has led to a football club much more modest than the Blaugrana and that the suspect trained before joining Barça: Unió Esportiva Sants .

Weight control without underpants

A former Sants player explained in the SER program Què t’hi jugues how the coach, during medical check-ups, sat on a chair and put a scale between his legs while his pupils were naked in line. When he got on the scale, his nose was very close to the boys’ genitals. “I saw how the parts smelled the players,” he says. Another former player of his at the club contacted by EL PERIÓDICO also evokes that weigh-in as uncomfortable as it is unusual and also how, in the rallies, he took someone for a ride in the car. The current president of the club, Joan Forcadell, has explained to this newspaper that at the moment they have not received any complaint from former players. But he reiterated the call for anyone who suffered harassment to report it and applauded the courage of the victims who have had the strength to share the traumas suffered.

What Julia (false name), a student at the Barcelona School between 1980 and 1988. “What’s wrong with being naked?”, she remembers how her ex-husband always asked her. “I am 47 years old and it continues to be difficult for me to be naked, I have a lot of shyness with my body since I had to run to shower to try to prevent him from seeing me,” she says. Not only does she recall how the PE teacher watched her shower, but she hasn’t forgotten what happened at lunchtime. Relive how Benaiges, always in his sweatpants, sat down to eat at a table where there were only girls. He put his hand in his pocket and began to move it incessantly over his crotch. The same hand that he used in class to take the pulsations in his chest or in the ass to ‘help’ in the bar exercises. “The best thing was never seeing him again,” says Julia.

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No official balance

The Mossos d’Esquadra They have not yet given judicial transfer of any of the complaints that during these days various people have filed against Benaiges for sexual abuse. They will not do it because the last decision made by the Catalan police is that the one who leads the investigation is the Central Sexual Assault Unit (UCAS). It will be this group of experts – the majority are women – who will bring together all the demands and, later, they will go to an on-call court. In order for investigations to begin, it will be necessary that at least one of the crimes reported is not prescribed.