The professional soccer player Jérôme Boateng is again in front of the Munich district court this summer because of allegations of violence made by his ex-girlfriend. As the public prosecutor announced on Friday, the main proceedings against the Berlin native are scheduled to begin on June 14th.
This reopens a process that has been going on for years. The 35-year-old was reported by his former partner for insult and bodily harm and was initially convicted in 2022. Last September, however, the Bavarian Higher Regional Court overturned the conviction due to procedural errors.
Not only Boateng had appealed, but also the public prosecutor and the co-prosecution. The process should now be completely restarted.
Six days of hearings are scheduled for the new trial. So now it’s again a question of whether or not Boateng hit, injured and insulted his then partner during a vacation in 2018 – or whether this accusation cannot be sufficiently substantiated. In 2022 the court ruled against Boateng (tagesschau.de) and sentenced him to a fine of around 1.2 million euros. That would have been 120 daily rates, meaning Boateng would have been considered to have a previous sentence.
The verdict was overturned because the presiding judge had made a crucial mistake: after the defense had filed a motion for bias against him, he himself was involved in the decision to reject the motion for bias. That’s why we’re now renegotiating.
Boateng will hope to be able to obtain an acquittal. However, if things go badly for him, the punishment in the trial, which is about to begin, could be even higher than the first time, as the public prosecutor and his ex-girlfriend as co-plaintiff had also filed an appeal.
These are not the only allegations of violence against Jérôme Boateng. There were also allegations against Boateng in connection with the suicide of another ex-girlfriend. His brother, the former Hertha professional Kevin-Prince Boateng, publicly distanced himself from Jérôme Boateng in an interview with the “Bild” newspaper a few years ago.
Jérôme Boateng used to be very successful as a footballer, including becoming world champion with the German national team in 2014. In his youth, like his brother Kevin-Prince, he played for Hertha BSC, and later for years at FC Bayern Munich. In February, the bottom of the Italian Serie A, Salernitana, signed Boateng.
In recent years, there have been allegations of physical and psychological violence by professional footballers against their ex-girlfriends, and not just in connection with him. However, the Boateng file got a lot going. The research network “Correctiv”, among others, reported on several cases in collaboration with the “Süddeutsche Zeitung”. [correctiv.de]which problematised the power imbalance that can arise in the industry.