Boavista President Found Guilty of Sexual Harassment of SAD Employee

Boavista president Vitor Murta has been found guilty by the Disciplinary Council (CD) of the Portuguese Football Federation (FPF) of sexual harassment against an SAD employee from the I Liga club, the federal disciplinary body detailed this Friday.

“In exercising the role of authority over the victim, he adopted offensive and discriminatory behavior based on gender, choosing the victim, as a woman, as the recipient of his rude expressions and hints, as well as inconvenient behavior that bothered the victim, which consists in assigning her a gender role, in the fact that she sees in her someone over whom, due to this circumstance, she could exercise her powers and prerogatives, materializing the offended party and thereby infringing on her dignity,” the KR states in the resolution, published on the official website of the FPF on the Internet.

On Monday, the federal disciplinary body announced a six-month ban and a fine of 2,448 euros for Vitor Murta, who currently leads only the “checkered” club, for “discriminatory behavior” following a disciplinary process that began on October 3. In 2023, he was still in charge of SAD do Boavista.

“During the period in which the injured party worked at the Boavista SAD, namely from September 2019 to mid-November 2022, the defendant, namely through rude expressions and innuendos, used inconvenient behavior that bothered the injured party during the facts, while still quite young,” explained the CD in a decision that can be appealed to the FPF Justice Council or the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).

The violations in question are Article 137 of the Disciplinary Regulations of the Portuguese Professional Football League (LPFP), which punishes “directors who commit conduct that is degrading to human dignity based on race, colour, language, religion, ethnic origin, gender or sexual orientation.”