The French Football Federation ordered to pay compensation to an employee victim of sexual harassment

The French Football Federation (FFF) was ordered by the Paris Court of Appeal to pay “8,000 euros as damages for his specific moral injury” to an employee for “failures” relating to the sexual harassment of which she was a victim at the hands of the financial director of the body, Marc Varin.

The FFF is therefore ordered to pay 18,000 euros to the complainant, if we add the 10,000 euros to which the FFF had already been condemned by the industrial tribunal in October 2021, for “failure to fulfill its obligation to combat acts of sexual harassment” accused of this financial director. The FFF, which appealed this decision, will also have to pay 5,500 euros in legal costs.

The complainant notably accused her superior of having tried to snatch a kiss from her on two occasions, at the end of 2017 and during the 2018 World Cup, also reporting “insistent looks”of “daily remarks” et “absolutely inappropriate observations”.

The management of the FFF had sent a “call to order” to its financial director and implemented “anti-harassment” training at its headquarters.

Six years of proceedings

In the appeal decision, the court confirmed the conviction before the industrial tribunal. The employee was well “victim of sexual harassment committed by a high-level executive of the FFF association, who allowed a deleterious atmosphere and actions contrary to respect for the dignity of women to persist within it”.

The court also dismissed the FFF's requests for compensation from the employee for damage to her image.

“It took six years to see the wrongful behavior of the FFF recognized, which, until the end of this procedure, took no notice of it, and worse, continued its nauseating and unworthy insinuations and accusations against its former employee”reacted the plaintiff's lawyer, M^e Marie-Alix Canu Bernard, to Agence France-Presse, regretting the dismissal of the criminal case by the prosecution.

“This affair, which allowed the revelation of new facts and thus the establishment of an audit within the FFF, was essential”she added.

The damning audit by the General Inspectorate of Education, Sport and Research (IGESR) on its management, and against a backdrop of accusations of sexual harassment, contributed to the resignation of FFF president Noël Le Graët , after eleven years of reign at the end of February 2023.