“He had nothing in his life.
He was himself like a child ”, tried to explain the defense, to justify the behavior of a former football coach from the suburbs of Toulouse, accused of having sexually assaulted from 2007 to 2020 around twenty teenagers .
This obviously did not convince the Toulouse Criminal Court (Haute-Garonne), which sentenced the 54-year-old man to eight years' imprisonment and five years of socio-judicial monitoring, closely following the prosecutor's requisitions.
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The former coach of the Aussonne club is also sentenced for possession of pornographic images of minors.
On the other hand, the charges of rape had been dismissed at the end of the investigation.
However, during the trial, Nelly Magendie the lawyer of the civil parties, recalled the behavior of a sexual nature of the defendant.
Under the guise of cutting their hair for free, he locked himself once a month with each of the boys concerned in a locker room.
It would then happen that he made the boy take a shower and dried him from top to bottom, then offered to shave his pubis, masturbate him or blow into his penis.
"Shattered lives"
"It is a fair sentence, commensurate with the gravity of what was committed and the high number of victims," said Mr. Magendie, in view of the consequences observed on the victims.
"There are shattered lives, young people who have sunk into drugs, who turn their anger on them, who are still in great suffering today," she said.
For his part, Alain Rouillé, the lawyer for the former coach, described the sentence as "severe" and regretted that the court did "not sufficiently retain that he collaborated, that he recognized his actions and that he expressed sincere regret ”.
Me Rouillé also relied on psychological expertise, which would prove that his client "was unaware of the suffering he was causing".
Teenagers under the "influence" of the coach
If the defendant admitted the facts, he denied "the manipulation" that the lawyer considers "obvious".
"It was displayed as psychological support when the children were going through difficult times," said the lawyer for the civil parties, stressing the "hold" of this man on his young victims.
“He says this locker room was the most practical, while it was the deepest.
He does not say either that he coaxed them with sweets ", among other elements going in the direction of" manipulation ", underlined Me Magendie.
The objective of this demonstration was to counterbalance the portrait of the former coach drawn up by the defense: that of a man for whom “the border between what was forbidden and what was not” has never been understood.
