French News is reporting that National Team swimmer Melanie Henique has been attacked outside of a restaurant in what is being described as a “homophobic attack.”
The 22-year old Henique, who was the bronze medalist in the 50 fly at the 2011 World Championships, says that she was with two friends last Friday coming out of a restaurant on June 26th in Amiens, when they were approached by four men.
The four men asked for cigarettes, she said, but continued that “she felt that wasn’t really what they wanted.”
Henique and her two female friends tried to leave, but that the men started to insult them and blocked their path. One of the men then hit Henique, and she says she’s not sure what else happened, but that she saw her friends on the ground as well.
“I had been insulted, but they had never hit me,” Henique said, who identifies herself as a lesbian, but says that she prefers to keep her private life private.
The alleged attack forced Henique to withdraw from the French Open last week and stop training for the upcoming World Championships which begin in less than a month in Kazan, Russia.
“She recovers and she will resume training on Monday,” said Sunday from Vichy the national technical director, Jacques Favre, to the AFP, saying that Henique would try and train with a mask on to reduce pressure on the injury.
“I am well aware of the homophobic climate in France today, unfortunately,” Henique said. “It is a form of racism is as unbearable as any other discrimination and it must be condemned as such” pleaded the Amiénoise, the two friends are unscathed.
Henique’s friends were not identified in the reports.
The World is just a miserable place to live in.
I sometimes have liked Gina Rhinestone’s posts on here, or have at least found them interesting, even if I disagreed. So I was really disappointed with his/her comments on this story, where (s)he stooped so low and bizarre. I had a longer post planned with a rebuttal to several of Gina Rhinestone’s seemingly ignorant assertions on here, two of which even seemed to suggest partially implicating Henique in her own victimization, (!) but then I just saw Rhinestone’s unnecessary and nasty comment about Natalie Coughlin’s photo shoot pic on the ESPN story on here, (and I suggest folks if they read it please just ignore or down vote without commenting), and it hit me that there is a recent pattern:… Read more »
I think Gina Rhinestone might have schizophrenia. I get that English is probably not her first language, but look how she occasionally capitalizes random words and puts spaces before punctuation.
Please don’t use Schizophrenia as a way to insult someone, which you are clearly doing since random capitalization is not, and never has been, a symptom of that very serious MEDICAL condition. Our bodies are fragile things…
I don’t mean to insult. Just looking at the way she writes seems to imply some sort of mental illness. You are correct though, I don’t know if it is schizophrenia. Could be something else.
I read more articles & each one is different . Now it was on the 3rd July & she was punched in the face . It also notes she is a Nationale Gendarme & as such should have had better appeasement skills . Just like my daughter , I know she cannot hit back because of their being military officers , therefore she needed to have used defensive / distraction techniques . Never to get knocked out –
I expect her to have given a full description of the offenders as she is trained to do . With the highlighted Terrorism alerts in France ( including President Hollande rushing back this week ) I should think a roving band… Read more »
I will have half of whatever she is drinking.
Gina Rhinestone is one of the more intelligent and astute commenters on this forum. On first blush may of the comments seem full of snark and every once in a while something else that I can’t quite describe. Before everyone here gives Gina a downvote, please read between the lines and try to understand the various nuances in the posting.
I like Gina Rhinestone. I don’t agree with everything she says, but she has interesting opinions and I’m glad she expresses them here. Go Gina!
Dearest Gina, one’s sexual orientation is not a choice. No one chooses to be afraid at night that they will be attacked, when, as proven by this story, that fear is a reality. Furthermore, (I’m assuming) as a straight woman, it is not your place to talk about what it means to be gay, and reduce her attraction to women as hating men. You do not have that experience, you do not know what it is like to read an article on swim swam, which I consider to be a safe place, and find comments disrespecting a woman who was a victim of a violent attack and promoting homophobic sentiments and feel like even when milestones such as marriage equality… Read more »
I will go out on a limb here and tell you that I highly doubt that Gina Rhinestone is bigoted and hateful. You need to read the lines that Gina writes to understand what Gina is saying. I fully support same sex marriage, same sex couples adopting, and equal rights for everyone, and I still think that Gina’s comments are not half baked.
Stop It Gina – the world is an ugly place, and even the world of swimming can be an ugly place full of palace type intrigue (USA Swimming, FINA), hatred, feudal type of thinking (USA Swimming and FINA), and the coddling of the swimmers, each of whom “need a ribbon or medal even if they finish… Read more »
Hang on here . I read first Bobo on the French Open thread saying she went to ER with a broken nose on June 26th . The above ( plus the French article ‘J’avais déjà ete insulte mais on NE m’avait Jamaica frappe’) says she was not hit .
Please get the story straight .
She was viciously mugged on the 26th, but the story surfaced in the French papers just Yesterday.
The quote means “I have already been insulted, but never hitten before”
This is terrible. I agree with Anonymous; People need not care about that this is a hate crime, they need to care that this is a crime at all. I realise that sounded a bit odd, but it shouldn’t matter why a crime was committed, just the fact that a crime was committed at all is awful. Whether Melanie is a lesbian or not, just the fact that a group of men attacked her and her friends is awful. Feel better soon Melanie, and cannot wait to see you in Kazan!
The “why” shouldnt matter when a crime is committed. I am not into “thought crimes”.
What’s “thought crime”, Anonymous?