The lawyer and former junior football coach was sentenced Friday by the Criminal Court of the Neuchâtel Cantonal Court to 34 months in prison, including 12 months for sexual acts with minors. The sentence was increased on appeal.
“The defendant developed significant criminal activity with numerous acts, perpetrated on several victims and this despite various alarms,” declared the President of the Court, Emmanuel Piaget. For the judge, the accused demonstrated denial and was not aware of the impact of his actions.
The judgment is accompanied by a lifetime ban on working at a professional and non-professional level with minors as well as an injunction to continue psychiatric treatment. In addition to sexual acts with minors, the defendant was found guilty of coercion, sexual coercion and assault. In addition to the 12 months in prison, the accused was sentenced to 22 months in prison, suspended for five years.
According to the President of the Tribunal, the accused carried out all of his acts “with the aim of control and domination and in a humiliating context”. He did urine tests, took the teenagers to the shower or took the measurements of the young people he had on internship or apprenticeship.
The Court found credible the statements of a young person who said he had been masturbated by the defendant while he slept in a hotel during trips paid for by the notable. This victim, “whose family is under the moral and financial influence of the defendant”, recanted and declared that it was blackmail. “No evidence in the file shows that this is manipulation,” explained Emmanuel Piaget.
The accused also touched the genitals of one of the complainants. The young person had the “choice” between sleeping with the accused in his bed or receiving a slap or spanking.
“Grip”
The accused, due to his status as a football coach, training supervisor or apprentice, exercised a “control” over the young people, which increased over time. He used extraordinary psychological pressure on the victims and submission, comparable to coercion, judged the President of the Court.
The adolescents “were unable to resist” due to emotional, societal and economic dependence on the accused.
Five young people are among the victims listed in the indictment. Three filed a complaint and two appealed the first trial where the forty-year-old was sentenced to 22 months in prison, suspended for three years.
Sexual connotation
The public prosecutor had requested 30 months in prison, 12 of which were closed. Prosecutor Sarah Weingart, who declared that “justice has been done”, noted during the hearing the sexual connotation of the defendant’s actions: spanking, soaping and drying the teenagers, putting cream on them, including on their private parts, masturbating them, sleeping in the same bed, attending their shower, standing naked as punishment.
The accused explained that he was in a father-son dynamic and that he was committed to the success of these young people. For his defenders, who pleaded for acquittal, the accused would have been a victim of the vox populi and judged “guilty from the start” and without proof.
“This case is haunted by the first. It is colored with a sexual dimension by the assessment of the Public Prosecutor’s Office,” declared Loïc Parein, defense lawyer.
In 2017, the lawyer-coach had already faced justice for similar acts. The Cantonal Court released him in the second instance of the charges against him, considering that the doubt should benefit the accused.
Upon learning of the court’s verdict, one of the defense lawyers Jean-Marie Röthlisberger explained that it is “staggering” that the sentence is higher than that requested by the public prosecutor. An appeal to the Federal Court has been announced. /ATS-gtr
