COACHING IS ABUSE

Second child sex offender allowed to work at Paris Olympics

Jeremy Wilson
Sun, August 4, 2024

Brett Sutton (R) was an accredited coach for China in Paris

The International Olympic Committee is investigating how an Australian child sex offender, who coached the women’s triathlon silver medallist, was accredited for the Paris Olympics.

Brett Sutton was photographed at the women’s triathlon with Switzerland’s Julie Derron while wearing an Olympic lanyard over his China tracksuit top. Derron finished one place above British bronze medallist Beth Potter.

Sutton pleaded guilty in 1999 to five counts of sexual abuse of a 13-year-old Australian girl who he had been coaching in the 1980s, receiving a suspended two-year prison sentence.

According to a report in The Sunday Times, the judge, Robert Hall, told Sutton that he had interfered with the girl in a “gross and disgraceful way” and “abused his role to an inexcusable degree”.

It follows the controversy over the the Dutch volleyball player Steven van de Velde, who was sentenced to four years in prison in 2016 after raping a 12-year-old British girl, and is into the last 16 of the Olympic doubles competition. Van de Velde had travelled from the Netherlands to the UK in August 2014, when he was 19, to meet his victim.

A spokesperson for Sutton said that he had served a three-year sanction imposed by the International Triathlon Union while a spokesperson for Australia’s National Olympic Committee said that Sutton was “banned for life from swimming in Australia following his sexual offences conviction”.

The IOC are now investigating. “We will look into this issue – there are many safeguarding facilities here but obviously the vetting, regulations and accreditation of people is part of a four-year process which depends on the work of National Olympic Committees and International Federations,” said an IOC spokesperson.

“While we have safeguarding measures in place unfortunately things do occur from time to time and we will look into this. Then there’s the broader, philosophical point.

“I don’t know exactly when but that crime may have taken place more than 10 years ago. There is some rehabilitation possible if people accept guidance, counselling and safeguarding, which we understood is the case. The NOC chooses and we have to be content that the situation is acceptable.”

In 2002, Sutton told the Observer that he no longer coached children under 16. “It’s the age of consent,” he said. “My lawyer told me. That way, no one can say I am a paedophile.”

According to World Triathlon, he is in Paris as an accredited coach for China and it is reported that he also attended the past three Olympic Games as a member of the Swiss team.

A spokesperson for the Swiss national Olympic committee said that Swiss athletes decide for themselves who they work with as personal coaches.

It is understood that Sutton, who has been based in Switzerland, has now left the Paris Games after his athletes finished competing.