The multiple Olympic medalist Jan Hempel speaks in an ARD documentary about years of sexual abuse by his coach. What Hempel reports is shocking. The athlete makes serious allegations against the association.
Jan Hempel speaks softly. Again and again he falters, looking for words for the incomprehensible, what he wants to tell, what he has to tell. The former world-class water diver wipes his face with his hands several times. You can feel: He is currently fighting a very hard battle. Hempel talks about a 14-year history of suffering. According to his own statements, from 1982 to 1996 he was repeatedly sexually abused by his then coach Werner Langer. Now, at the age of almost 51, he is going public with it.
In a documentary by ARD entitled “Abused – Sexualized Violence in German Swimming”, the 1996 Atlanta Olympic silver medalist talks about the allegations against Langer, who died in 2001. “I was abused by my coach. He never missed a moment not to let his wishes and needs run free,” says Hempel, adding: “I think you owe it to others for the future too speaks.”
According to Hempel, he defended himself against Langer for the first time before the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. The following year he reported to the then national coach about the events. Langer was suspended at the time, but not because of abuse, but because of an alleged Stasi past, says Hempel. “Everyone has been silent until today.”
Dresdner SC, for which Hempel used to be active, was shocked. “What I had to read and see in the media today shocks me deeply,” DSC President Wolfgang Söllner is quoted as saying in a club statement. “After the allegations became known internally, Mr. Langer was withdrawn from the national coach at the time and given a lifelong indoor ban by the DSC,” said Söllner. “It was Jan Hempel’s express wish at the time to keep the subject out of the media.”
“I didn’t know the allegations until today,” said Söllner. “According to my research today, it seems correct that Jan Hempel made these allegations against his coach in 1997.” At that time, Langer was working for the federal association at the Dresden base and was not employed by the DSC.
Hempel is disappointed by the German Swimming Association (DSV). “I had to feel firsthand for many years that only sporting success is important to the DSV and that everything else, whether health or any problems, actually takes a backseat,” says the Saxon. There are still people in the association who used to do it that way.
Hempel himself names the long-standing DSV official and trainer Lutz Buschkow as an accomplice. Until the film was broadcast, Buschkow was part of the DSV delegation at the European Swimming Championships in Rome as a trainer for the water jumpers. “The current national diving coach Lutz Buschkow is accused in the documentation of having knowledge of Jan Hempel’s allegations against his former coach Werner Langer at the time. The DSV board is currently examining this allegation intensively,” said a first statement from the association in the evening. At the present time, the inspection of files that has already been carried out has not produced any such indications, it said.
The process of clarification is not yet complete. “Nevertheless, due to its high moral standards, the DSV board decided to release Mr. Buschkow from his position as national diving coach in the DSV with immediate effect until the facts have been finally clarified.”
Hempel accuses Buschkow of having contributed to the failure to process his case. Confronted with the allegations, Buschkow himself did not comment on the ARD, the broadcaster says. The ARD reported that the current leadership of the association stated that it had learned of Hempel’s allegations from the broadcaster.
Hempel also reported that Langer abused a stadium toilet before the 1992 Olympic final in high diving in Barcelona. Another athlete who wants to remain anonymous says in the documentary that Langer “attacked” him while he was sleeping.
Hempel was diagnosed with the onset of Alzheimer’s disease. “I notice that more and more is disappearing from my head. Now I can still remember it. I don’t know how long that will be the case,” says Hempel, who wrote down details about the abuse for himself.
Hempel had previously told his wife Ines about it. “It was very difficult for him to talk about it, so he wrote it down,” reported Ines Hempel in tears in the documentation. She read these notes and says: “What has broken the soul, I can’t heal either.”
Maximilian Klein from Athletes Germany commented on Twitter “speechless and sad” about the allegations and called for an “independent review”. “The documentary shows well-known things,” wrote the athlete representative. CSU politician Stephan Mayer called the allegations “shocking”. “In the specific case, it must be investigated whether the German Swimming Association was informed of the allegations in 1997 and why it did not react,” said the sports policy spokesman for the CDU and CSU, according to a statement.
