Status: 15.01.2024, 17:52 PM
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The former youth coach at TSV Neuried is said to have abused protégés around 1000 times. © Sigi Jantz
The former youth football coach of TSV Neuried, who has to answer to the Munich Regional Court, confessed on Monday to having abused 30 of his protégés. Previously, he and the public prosecutor's office had accepted the court's plea bargain proposal.
Neuried – The ex-coach has confirmed the accusation with a confession: According to it, between 2015 and 2020, he pretended to the players that they were trained in physiotherapy and asked them to seek treatment from him. The married father of two children carried out the "treatments" at his home, in the training camp, but mainly in a club dressing room. He instructed the players to undress and lie down on a massage table – and touched them to arouse themselves sexually.
As a police officer reported on Monday, he is said to have told the players that this would stimulate blood circulation and increase their performance. Football was the boys' "purpose in life" at the time. They were on the pitch up to five times a week. Even if the defendant probably did not explicitly threaten not to line up, the young people would have had this impression. The defendant had acted "very perfidiously". He had given the impression "professionally and comprehensibly" that this was "standard in competitive sports," the policewoman explained. Although they had talked about it, the sexually inexperienced players would not have aroused any suspicion: "He does that with all of us."
Criminal charges filed in December 2021
The matter came to light when one of the boys had been treated by a physiotherapist outside the club - and had undressed without being asked. At the same time, an anonymous complaint was received by a reporting office. In January 2021, TSV Neuried separated from the defendant and filed a criminal complaint on December 10, 2021. Shortly thereafter, the police searched the accused's apartment, but found nothing incriminating. And this despite the fact that it was reasonable to assume that he had filmed the abuses in the cabin: slats had broken out of a ventilation grille above the couch.
The defendant is accused of sexual abuse of wards, rape, child abuse and assault. In addition, preventive detention and placement in a psychiatric ward are on the table. For a confession, the court had promised him a prison sentence of between seven and eight years. Through his defense attorney Peter Guttmann, the defendant declared that he had "gone astray." In order "not to burden the athletes further", he agrees to the deal. Prosecutor Susanne Kempter, who had asked for a sentence "in the range of eleven years", also stressed "the interest in victim protection" and agreed to the deal in order to spare the players the testimony. The verdict, scheduled for the end of February, could now come sooner.