A football coach from Bavaria has to answer before the Munich I regional court for allegations of sexual abuse. (IMAGO / Heike Schreiber-Braun)
The extent of the serious attacks is shocking. Laurent Lafleur, press spokesman for the Munich I Regional Court, speaks of 944 cases listed by the prosecution: “I think what makes this case exceptional is the number of cases. “I can’t actually remember a case that would have been of such magnitude,” says Lafleur, who also works as a judge at the Munich Higher Regional Court.
In fact, a case of this magnitude has rarely been reported in sports. Most recently, the Hagen regional court convicted a judo trainer of 685 crimes. He had assaulted his judo students over a period of 20 years.
Trainers working in many places
The Munich I public prosecutor’s office has concentrated the charges in the football coach’s case on a period of six years. During this time, the accused was, among other things, a coach at clubs in the Munich area. Before that, the defendant also worked for a professional club. And the Bavarian Football Association also confirmed at Deutschlandfunk’s request that the accused was working on behalf of the association: as a coach of a competitive sports class at an elite football school.
“As soon as the allegations against the coach became known, the Bavarian Football Association ended its cooperation and, like the school, is cooperating fully with the investigative authorities. To date, the BfV is not aware of any cases in connection with coaching activities in competitive sports classes. “No cases were reported to us,” emphasizes Fabian Frühwirth from the Bavarian Football Association.
Consider if charged
“Of course, we also carried out intensive investigations at other locations where the youth coach worked. But of course we also have to weigh up what we end up accusing. “It may play a role, for example, whether the injured parties would even be able to go through such a trial and testify in such a trial,” says Anne Leiding, spokeswoman for the Munich I public prosecutor’s office, explaining the authority’s approach. She confirms: There are more people affected than listed in the indictment.
Existing trust exploited
Apparently the coach took advantage of the power and dependency relationship that existed between him and the players. According to the prosecution, at the time of the crime, the young athletes were in a phase of life in which football “was the most important thing of all.” They were proud “to be able to train under the defendant, as he was considered a top-class footballer and had already trained professionals.”
This is also why the young players may have perceived the coach’s actions as if it were normal in football. According to the indictment, the sexual assaults took place either in the dressing room, in the hotel room during training camps or in the trainer’s private home.
Perpetrator strategy: Physiotherapeutic treatment
“He is then said to have pretended to them that he also worked as a physiotherapist and then sold the sexual acts as supposed physiotherapeutic acts or treatments,” says court spokesman Laurent Lafleur, describing the perpetrator’s strategy.
There are also said to have been acts that involved penetrating the body. The coach also explained this to the players as a physiotherapeutic treatment method.
That’s exactly what the US doctor Larry Nasser led his protégés to believe. As a doctor for the US gymnastics team, he had sexually abused numerous female athletes, including Olympic champions, over the years under the pretext of physical therapy treatment. For this, a US court sentenced him to life in prison in 2018.
Unresponsive to pain
This parallel shows once again how strategically perpetrators operate. And that they use sport to approach those affected in a harmless way and to specifically commit the crimes.
As in the case of the football coach from Munich: “The crimes are particularly the sexual abuse of those under protection, but in some cases also rape and bodily harm,” says Laurent Lafleur, spokesman for the Munich I Regional Court.
The youngest person affected was 13 years old at the time of the crime, i.e. a child. The other footballers affected were teenagers or already of legal age.
The indictment shows that some of the players involved were in pain during the acts and made it clear. Nevertheless, the defendant continued his criminal acts.
Due to the seriousness of the crimes, the public prosecutor’s office was considering a prison sentence of at least eleven years, confirms Anne Leiding. But then the authorities agreed to a so-called deal that the defendant’s defense had suggested: the defendant’s confession in return for a more lenient prison sentence.
Protection of those affected prevails
“This deal is not what the prosecution wanted to achieve in this case. However, the deal protects the victims by protecting them from further statements that the court would have deemed necessary if this confession had not occurred. And then of course we have to weigh things up on the part of the public prosecutor. And here the protection of the victims and the desire of the public prosecutor to achieve a higher prison sentence for the defendant outweighs,” said Leiding.
Maximum eight years in prison after confession
Now it’s probably about a prison sentence of between seven and eight years. The verdict could come at the end of February.
The defense attorney read out a brief confession from the coach that the crimes took place as alleged by the public prosecutor and that he wanted to carry them out exactly the same way. Anne Leiding calls this a minimal confession and adds: “Beyond the defense statement, the defendant said nothing about remorse or apology.”
The father of a player was in the courtroom on the day of the trial. The defendant missed this opportunity to ask for forgiveness.
Those affected by sexual violence perceive signs of remorse differently. Some have described in interviews with Deutschlandfunk, among others, that it was important to them that the actions that had taken place were recognized in this way. Others had emphasized that the harm done to them could never be forgiven.