Marcel Goncalves – a BJJ black belt and former Fight Sports affiliate instructor – was arrested and charged with multiple counts of sexual assault in March 2018; due to the allegations that he had intimate relations with a 16 year-old student.
On Friday, August 13, it was Roberto “Cyborg” Abreu (read about Mo Jassim’s allegations against him and Vagner Rocha here) who first issued an updated statement:
To the victims and their families, I am sorry for my poor handling, ill preparedness and lack of proper leadership to address the horrible experience they had to go through. I have reached out privately and directly to each victim, to apologize in depth for my shortcomings and to establish a line of communication with them. To inform them of the actions I am taking personally and to learn from this and do better.
I failed to lead and enact harsher policy that can prevent this from happening. These shortcomings in my handling of these sort of situations ends today. That is why, having listened and learned from this, I have decided to implement, effective immediately a ZERO TOLERANCE POLICY for all sexual abuse or sexual misconduct related incidents within our gyms.Anyone accused will be temporarily removed until an investigation determines the facts. And if found guilty by our investigation or by authorities, this person shall lose their affiliation to our team immediately and their belts and ranks will be automatically taken away.
As for Marcel Goncalves, I am stripping him of his black belt and have severed all ties between him and our organization.
Furthermore, I have investigated and become aware of all other reported or alleged incidents of this nature that have occurred in the 19-year history of our team and am stripping two more individuals of the belts I once gave them and banning them for life from all Fight Sports academies worldwide.
Moving forward, this will be our policy without exceptions.
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VAGNER ROCHA ISSUES UPDATED STATEMENT
Vagner Rocha took it upon himself to issue a renewed statement as well; doing so through an 11 minutes long video. In it, he emphasizes that he is extremely sorry for what the victim went through. Also, he wanted to do a good thing by inviting Goncalves’s wife and daughter to train in his academy; but he made a mistake of letting Goncalves step into the academy and watch the training take place.
Additionally, Rocha made a point that Goncalves was never an instructor in his academy. And that he never had an opportunity to pose a risk to children. He did, however, train with the more senior athletes of the academy behind closed doors; which Rocha admits was a mistake and takes full responsibility for.
Listen to Rocha’s full statement here:
