The Austrian judo Olympic champion Peter Seisenbacher has been sentenced to five years imprisonment for sexual abuse of minors. The 59-year-old was found guilty on Monday at the Vienna Regional Court.
Judge Christoph Bauer said at the verdict, the stress witnesses had made an "extremely credible" impression. "We did not get the impression that the three were lying, wrong or agreed," said Bauer.
Seisenbacher, who had pleaded not guilty at the beginning of the proceedings, was accused of sexual abuse of three minors during his time as a coach. Appeal against the judgment can still be appealed by both sides.
Seisenbacher, who had brought Olympic weight at middleweight in 1984 in Los Angeles and 1988 in Seoul, had left the first trial date at the Vienna Strafland Court on 19 December 2016 unencumbered and then submerged. First, he was arrested in the Ukrainian capital of Kiev, but later released. Only a few weeks ago he was taken up again when crossing the border from Ukraine to Poland.
