Boateng transfer

“This is a mockery of every single victim”

Stop, stop, stop violence against women - an issue that Eva Schuh champions and sharply criticizes the signing of Jérôme Boateng for LASK.(Bild: APA/LASK, Einöder Horst (KI generiert), Krone KREATIV)

With the signing of Jérôme Boateng, LASK has scored an own goal. The head of the Upper Austrian Violence Protection Center also takes the club to task, not only seeing the transfer as "a mockery of every single victim", but also that soccer "has a violence problem".

The fact that LASK is bringing the scandalous professional to Linz is causing a stir, but not so much from a sporting point of view. Boateng is not only alleged to have actively supported a media smear campaign against his ex-partner Kasia Lenhardt - which ultimately drove the young mother to suicide - but mistreatment of the mother of his two children also brought him two court cases, both of which ended with Boateng being convicted. Formal procedural errors have now led to a retrial on June 14. 

"Krone": Ms Schuh, as Managing Director of the Upper Austrian Violence Protection Center, you deal with women affected by violence on a daily basis. Do you find the discussions about the signing of Jérôme Boateng at LASK understandable?
Eva Schuh: I think the discussion is justified. Unfortunately, violence is always an issue in soccer and LASK should actually deal with it sensitively. There is an obligation for all sports clubs to have protection concepts. This means that they should have already dealt with the issue in depth. And they obviously haven't in this case.