Guilty gloat as they get off lightly

When the first trial of former East German coaches and doctors accused of having doped underage athletes started on March 18th of this year, the last GDR General Secretary Egon Krenz showed up to cry victor's justice. "This trial is about revenge," snapped the former Communist Party leader indignantly, "because East Germany was more successful in sport than West Germany."

Krenz made an appearance at Berlin's Moabit courthouse again last week to say much the same thing, and to gloat at the ineffectiveness of the ever-lengthening proceedings. "It amuses me to see how one argument after another is refuted," he said smugly. "It will not be proved that there was across-the-board doping in the GDR."

For the past eight months Berlin has been the stage for the historic hashing out of the former German Democratic Republic's state-controlled doping scheme - one that brought sporting glory to the tiny nation of 16 million for over two decades.

And while the system that sacrificed the health of young athletes for the glory of Communism has been confirmed without a doubt, the trials have been strangely dissatisfying in their outcome, marked by a curious discord in which victims have, for the most part, been reluctant to co-operate with authorities seeking to bring perpetrators to justice.

The two separate trials held to date have in no way resembled one another. For months the six accused from Berlin's former Stasi-run (the East German Secret Police) SC Dynamo club maintained a stony silence, forcing the court to resort to witness testimonies and copious material from Stasi files as evidence.

Of the nineteen 19 women called to testify, only three felt they had been wronged. Others were indifferent or remembered nothing. Some even defiantly defended the coaches who fed them male hormones in the guise of vitamin pills.

Oral-Turinabol, an East German manufactured anabolic steroid, was used to give the extra kick to an already highly scientific training regime. Administered to young athletes of both sexes, it had a particularly marked effect on girls, allowing them a significant improvement in athletic performance, but also causing bouts of acne, growth of facial hair, deepened voices, muscle cramps, menstrual irregularities, and in some cases, liver damage.

The first verdicts were reached in August and so far, seven coaches and three doctors have been fined after being charged with inflicting grievous bodily harm on underage female swimmers during the 1970s and 1980s. The fines have ranged from 3,000 to 27,000 German marks.

The trial of Berlin's second-ranked TSC club was significant in that all five accused turned up ready to make confessions. After two days the court made history by reaching the first ever verdict, thereby setting an important precedent for future trials.

Given that they were aware of the possible negative consequences of Oral-Turinabol, Dr Ulrich Suender, Dr Dorit Roesler, and former coach Peter Mattonet were found guilty of grievous bodily harm. Two further coaches were given lesser penalties.

The court found that alone the administration of non-medically required drugs to healthy athletes for the purpose of performance enhancement constitutes grievous bodily harm, even according to the former GDR medical code. In other words, no actual irreversible physical damage needed to be found in the victims to establish guilt; artificially stimulated muscles or deepened voices developed during their swimming careers were sufficient.

It was significant that although the accused pleaded lenience based on their having been part of a centrally organised system, that fact served as no justification. The judge said they were part of a system of "state-ordered crime," but nevertheless could have chosen to act differently. Instead they abused the trust of their young charges and their parents.

The first to raise the white flag in the Dynamo trials was Dr Dieter Binus. Responsible for the Dynamo swimmers from 1969-1986, Binus was also the GDR women's national team doctor in the late 1970s. Reading from a typed confession Binus claimed to have merely been "following the orders of his superiors" when distributing Oral-Turinabol tablets to coaches.

As for side effects of the drugs, he maintained, "To my knowledge the dosages were low enough such that any side effects could be avoided."

As the frustrated prosecutor has persisted in calling a series of useless witnesses, the trial has spiralled into farce. Those under investigation themselves, like the former head of the GDR's Sports Medicine Services Dr Manfred Hoeppner, have exercised their right to silence.

People like Krenz and the "Honecker of sport," former East German Sport Federation president Manfred Ewald, have watched with glee as the momentum of the so-called "pilot" trial has slowed to an uncomfortable crawl. While much of the Stasi file material has been validated as evidence, they and their supporters maintain that it is scandalous to rely on such subjective documents.

The Dynamo trial will grind to a halt in early December. With verdicts already reached the implications for future trials of those higher up the chain of responsibility - namely the medical and political masterminds behind the doping system - are clear. That the GDR doped its way to international sporting glory can no longer be disputed.

But the question remains as to about whether the several hundred cases still under investigation will ever come to fruition. A statute of limitations on the offences of October 2nd, 2000 coupled with the lagging tempo of proceedings makes assembling the evidence for further prosecutions look like a tall order.

"When you see what was actually done with us, the punishments are laughable," says one victim, herself a medical doctor. "5,000 DM is ridiculous, a month's salary perhaps. Then I ask myself what is going to come of all this? I do think it should be punished, but how do you effectively punish such a crime?"