Sexual Assault in the FPV Community
It has been reported that a female FPV pilot was sexually assaulted at an event in Europe. The report was shared on the Amelia Droneharts women’s drone group Facebook page. The assault occurred during an October 5th-6th event held in Poland called Dronetech 2nd World Meeting Toruń 2017. The female pilot was flying and wearing her FPV goggles at the time she was assaulted. The attack was witnessed by surrounding event participants who were able to corroborate her story and identify the assailant.
According to the pilot assaulted, the perpetrator grabbed her rear end and said, “I was just checking if you have panties on.” She explained that although there were witnesses, none of them confronted the groper about his inappropriate behavior. The victim stated that Poland tends to fall behind when it comes to sexism and attitudes towards women. Only one of the witnesses, all of whom were male, has stated willingness to testify because he no longer races and doesn’t fear retribution from other event judges.
The pilot immediately reported the incident to an event organizer with Dronetech and expected swift action since the perpetrator was an event judge. The pilot contacted the organizer again after one month passed to follow up on her report. Nothing had been done and the organizer brushed her off saying, “Oh! I thought you didn’t want anyone to say anything.” Although they were not sponsors of this particular event, she decided to contact both FAI and NAC organizations about the assault because the perpetrator is also an event judge for them. She felt they should be aware what had happened to her at Dronetech and feared it happening again to someone else at one of their events. She was told that it was not their problem and asked why she had waited so long to say anything. Beginning in 2018, the FAI requested that national teams of five pilots must each include at least one junior pilot and one female pilot. This policy is worrisome if the FAI organization is not willing to take complaints of sexual harassment seriously.
This is not acceptable. This is not how you attract more women into the FPV community. Most important, this is not how you treat women and fellow human beings. This could have been your sister, your wife or your daughter. This could have been you or me. If you think that Dronetech, FAI, and NAC should ban the assailant from all future events, you may contact them and let them know.
This pilot should not have to endure attending another race with this unethical judge present and no women should have to participate in an event where he is in attendance. And I want to know, when is it ever okay to touch a pilot anywhere while they are flying? This is a huge distraction to any pilot, could cause accidents, and if done during a race could be considered sabotaging the pilots chance to succeed or win, regardless of gender.
Although the pilot who made the report wanted initially to keep this matter within the organization, inaction on the part of event organizers inspired her to come public with her ordeal. When asked what motivated her, she stated,”I won’t let it happen. Never again, to anyone.”
Addendum:
A few people have had questions as to why the police were not immediately called. It’s my understanding that there has been a push by at least one of the organizations involved to bring drones to the Olympics. She felt a public scandal might tarnish the FPV community and harm these efforts. She wanted to handle it internally and expected organizers would do the correct thing and remove the man from their future events. When this did not happen, she contacted an attorney who explained that trying to prosecute would be a long, hard, expensive fight with no guarantee of winning, discouraging her from continuing that route. In addition, the political and social climate towards women can vary greatly from country to country. This did not happen in the United States. What might be an effective recourse for American women may not work out the same for other women around the globe.
The names of the victim and perpetrator were left out intentionally. The purpose of sharing this story is not for either of them to receive death threats or threats of bodily harm, but to bring attention to the problem and pressure event organizers to remove this person from future events. The organizers know who they are.
Dronetech
NAC
FAI
oh hell no. thank you for bringing this to light.
ReplyDeleteYa, ban that guy from everything fpv related. Totally unacceptable
ReplyDeletefor real whoever you are thank you for posting this, no human deserves to be treated like
ReplyDeletethis period..
Shameful this sort of thing went down at an event.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing. That's incredibly infuriating.
ReplyDeleteI would encourage people to reach out to the organizers and let them know we expect more to be done to keep our community healthy.
I used the FAI's contact form to send them a message:
https://www.fai.org/contact
Dronetech-poland lists the following email addresses on their contact page. I also emailed all of them:
Paweł Słupski ,
Adrian Drzycimski ,
Łukasz Kaźmierczak ,
Olga Wiśniewska ,
office@dronetech-poland.com
The NAC site was in Polish, so I couldn't navigate it.
Here's what I said, if you want a starting point.
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I'm writing in response to this report of sexual assault at Dronetech 2017: https://flygirlfpv.blogspot.com/2018/05/sexual-assault-in-fpv-community.html
This is extremely concerning, and I hope a full investigation will be done and appropriate action taken. We cannot allow this to happen in our industry.
Thank you for your time,
Whoops, the emails got eaten. Here are the emails for Dronetech:
Deletepawel@dronetech-poland.com, adrian@dronetech-poland.com, lukasz@dronetech-poland.com, olga@dronetech-poland.com, office@dronetech-poland.com
Don't forget the Facebook Page which allows posting content and asking Questions =)
ReplyDeletehttps://www.facebook.com/airsports.fai/
Thanks. I posted to their page, but it didn't appear, I guess they need to approve it. I saw someone wrote a review, I liked and chimed in on that, though:
Deletehttps://www.facebook.com/pg/airsports.fai/reviews/
This cannot be tolerated. Several people must know who this individual is. Identify him. Ban him. Ceharge and prosecute him. Nothing less. Every one of us in this community owe it to the victim and possible future victims to put an end to this type of activity.
ReplyDeleteDisgusting behaviour. As for those who saw it happen but did nothing, and those who've been told, who are in a position to do something but who have so far done nothing: 'if you're not part of the solution you're part of the problem' - and - 'the standard you walk past is the standard you accept'. The audience and organisers are equally to blame. Not speaking up is akin to tacit approval. How many other women has this man groped? You can guarantee that this would not have been a one-off incident. Good men need to stand up and speak out, because this sort of thing brings you all into disrepute.
ReplyDeleteI love when people share only parts of story and leave out the important bits... The girl and the judge mentioned in the article were very close friends and were seen plenty of times in couple like fashion before Toruń. She was the one that set the tone of their relationship and she was the one that often provoked hugs or sitting on his lap. Being good friends no one was against that. We even speculated they might be real couple behind the scenes. But there continues her manipulation of public opinion when stupid friend's joke is turned around against all of man and most importantly, if you notice, she's on shameful crusade against Poland. Why you ask? Because we know her, all too well, and don't approve of her. I hope you'll know the real her sooner than later cause it might be too late and you'll be facing public charges of something that you didn't do.
ReplyDeleteShhh dont tell them that part, it will ruin there march.
DeleteUnfortunately these days no one wants to hear both sides, instead we only listen to the one crying the loudest.
The OFFICIAL STATEMNT of DroneTech World Meeting organizers
ReplyDeleteIn the face of the article published, which reflects badly uponDroneTech World Meeting, we wish to present the organizer’s official statement.
Dear Sir or Madam,
as organizers of DroneTech World Meeting, we understand the gravity of the situation and to begin with, we wish to emphasize with absolute certainty that we condemn the behaviors mentioned in the article- so it was, is now, and ever shall be.
DroneTech World Meeting is a place, where we will never consent to behaviors violating the personal freedom of another human being.
This event is organized in the spirit of integration of various environments aiming at the development of the UAV industry and promoting drone racing as a sports discipline.
When organizing competitions, we make sure to cooperate with persons of good repute, which is why the information received in an unofficial conversation, on our way to an evening integration meeting, caused our serious concern and we expressed readiness to immediately undertake appropriate actions to clarify the matter in a reliable manner and familiarize ourselves with the opinions of both parties.
At the request of the contestant, the matter was not made official. Despite this, due to the gravity of the situation, we watched the atmosphere and behaviors during the second day of the competitionclosely. For this purpose, the technical team had been alerted to pay attention to inappropriate behavior of people participating in the competition.
We heard about the matter again a month after the event, in a private Facebook conversation with one of the organizers. The contestantwas then assured once again that we were able to revisit the matter and provide support and assistance.
The decision for the organizers not to undertake any actions, due to the fact that the case had been referred to the appropriate authorities, was clearly expressed by the contestant.
As of now, the list of judges for the next edition of the competition has not been published in any official or unofficial reports.
Rest assured that the composition of this year's referee team will be affected by the resolution of this case.
We assure you that we are ready to get involved in the process aiming at a thorough clarification of the matter and we offer all the support necessary in this respect.
We deplore the form of the article which has already passed judgment on the organizers of the DroneTech World Meeting, which will undoubtedly affect the opinion about the events we organize.
.
We inform that the authors did not give us the opportunity to respond to the allegations addressed to us earlier.
We are sorry that the project which we so wholeheartedly involved in and passionate about, and which we spend a great deal of energy on, a project that unites various environments related to the UAV industry, was shown in such a negative manner.
Once again, we guarantee that we will make every effort to ensure that these types of incidents or any other incidents that undermine the personal freedom of another human beingdo not happen during the DroneTech World Meetings.
From here, we would like to invite you to participate in the next edition, heldon October 19th-20th, 2018 and encourage you to find out for yourself what the value of the event and the level of its organization is.
Sincerely,
DroneTech World Meeting Team:
Olga, Paweł, Łukasz, Adrian