Ralph Gracie addressed the Melqui Galvão situation – and, asked about se*ual assault allegations in martial arts, he placed the responsibility on instructors and gym owners.
Here is what the Gracie had to say:
We, professors, gym owners, we’re responsible for the physical and mental [wellbeing] of them in the academy.
Of any person, a woman, a child.
He described the instructor’s role as a position of trust, and one that demands strict consequences when it is abused:
The professor is the guy who is responsible, and (if) the professor is the guy who is doing what he is doing – my friend, the law has to be severe, this can’t happen.
His sharpest remarks concerned Galvão’s alleged actions involving minors:
If you take a girl from 12 years old, a girl who doesn’t have money to pay a kimono and then go to [have relations] with a girl, it’s crazy.
Gracie said the sport has no room for this behavior and that cases like it are not isolated:
There are more cases, more things like this. And our sport doesn’t have space for this.
And it’s good this incident was exposed. Why? Because more people will hear it.
And the more people will hear it, less happens. That’s what I think.
On the Galvão case itself, Gracie praised the family that refused financial compensation:
Congratulations to the girl that didn’t accept it… Thank you, mother, who is taking care of your daughter really.
Hearing audio evidence in the case, he said, hit him hard:
When I saw it, my blood pressure [rose].
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