Paralympic medalist Marcos Falcón is accused of sexual abuse

The Venezuelan judoka and Paralympic medalist Marcos José Falcón Tovar, 42 years old, has been accused by the Public Ministry (MP, Prosecutor’s Office) of sexual abuse against three underage athletes, whom he “kissed and touched their legs during the training” in a town in the state of Miranda (north, near Caracas), the institution reported this Monday.

Falcon Tovar won bronze medal in judo in London 2012.

According to an official note, the victims, aged between 15 and 17, reported the subject on October 1 to a local police headquarters, where they stated that “the aggressor told them that, in order to move up” in the discipline, “they had to spend the night with him in his residence.”

That same day, officials detained the athlete, who was later charged with the crimes of “sexual abuse without penetration and sexual harassment,” for which a court ordered his arrest at the police headquarters in Miranda.

At the beginning of this month, the Attorney General, Tarek William Saab, inaugurated a prosecutor’s office specialized in crimes of sexual abuse of children and adolescents, attached to the General Directorate for the Protection of Family and Women, in collaboration with the Fund of the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) in the Caribbean country.

For the UN agency, the establishment of this office “is significant because it is the first time” that an instance of the Public Ministry “will be dedicated exclusively to the protection of children against these types of transgressions.”

In Venezuela, 278 cases of sexual violations against minors were registered from March 1 to the end of July of this year, according to the Network for the Human Rights of Children and Adolescents (Redhnna).