Ajax has already had to deal with accusations of sexually transgressive behavior, reports NRC† Winston Bogarde, who is in his third season as Erik ten Hag’s assistant coach, sent unwanted messages in private to a female victim, who described this as ‘sexual harassment’. Ajax had the matter investigated externally, but concluded that it was a ‘private matter’: Bogarde was therefore allowed to stay on.
The conclusions of the external agency that investigated the case are clear. According to the researchers, Bogarde ‘actively contributed to an interaction pattern that was destructive for the complainant’. The woman was left with serious psychological damage from the incident, a psychologist concluded. Later, the woman was also diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.
At the end of 2020, the victim sent a written complaint to Ajax about ‘seriously transgressive behaviour’. That ended up with Menno Geelen, commercial director of the club. The investigation that Ajax subsequently started up took six months. This had to do with the large amount of information that had to be viewed: hundreds of WhatsApp messages as well as film and images.
The woman did not work at Ajax, but came into contact with the former left back ‘because of Bogarde’s position at Ajax’. The conclusions of the investigation: Bogarde was ‘disrespectful during the contact and over time became aggressive in a verbal way’. The former international has ‘ignored the objections and objections’ of the woman.
For Ajax, however, the matter was ‘not work-related’, which meant that Bogarde was allowed to stay on. At that time, the assistant of Ten Hag fell hierarchically under director of football affairs Marc Overmars, who recently left himself due to sexually transgressive behaviour. The supervisory board and the rest of the management of Ajax were also aware of the matter: general director Edwin van der Sar, financial director Susan Lenderink and the aforementioned Geelen. Ajax has spoken ‘intrusively’ with Bogarde several times ‘where that was possible’, according to documentation in the hands of NRC†