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Boateng at the start of the trial in Munich: "I said: Sorry for the mess!"
Photo: CHRISTOF STACHE / AFP
When Kevin-Prince Boateng fouled the then DFB captain Michael Ballack so badly that he couldn't go to the 2010 World Cup, his brother Jèrôme had some advice. "Perhaps you will apologize to Michael personally," he wrote to his older brother. However, it was not just a cell phone dialogue between siblings. Jèrôme Boateng made his tip public and cemented the image of the different Boateng brothers: Kevin-Prince, the bad boy of German football, and Jèrôme, the model boy.
But in the past few months this nimbus has crumbled and so this morning Jèrôme Boateng appears before the district court of Munich.
He has been earning his own money as a footballer since he was 16.
He played for FC Bayern for ten years, was world champion in 2014 and footballer of the year in 2016.
Boateng was a two-time Champions League player, eight-time German champion, five-time DFB Cup winner.
He recently started playing for Olympique Lyon.
The court is about an allegedly tangible dispute between the professional footballer and his former partner S., the mother of his twin daughters, during a vacation together in July 2018. Boateng is charged with simple willful assault and ten hours later he is fined 60 Daily rates of 30,000 euros each were sentenced.
For judge Kai Dingerdissen it is a process that he negotiates every day.
For the public, it is a process that arouses particularly great interest after the death of Boateng's ex-girlfriend Kasia Lenhardt last February: The first spectators are already 24 hours before the start of the negotiations to get a seat in the largest hall of the Munich Higher Regional Court .
Above all, however, it is a process in which a lot is at stake for Boateng: The verdict could mean that the children are no longer allowed to stay with him in Grünwald.
"Degraded in their honor"
Jèrôme Boateng, the 1.92-meter professional kicker with gold-rimmed glasses and a white shirt wearing a midnight blue suit, looks nervous. Public prosecutor Stefanie Eckert sits across from him and holds up against him about how he should have freaked out on the penultimate day of that vacation on the Turks and Caicos Islands in the Caribbean. According to this, Boateng is said to have thrown a glass lantern and later a bottle-filled cooler bag at his girlfriend at the end of the evening "purposefully and with full force." Boateng called her a "whore, cunt and slut" "in order to belittle her honor," as Eckert explains.
“Did you do it again, you whore.
You screwed up the whole vacation «, the footballer is said to have yelled at S.
It is said to have started screaming and another attack: According to this, Boateng hit the woman in the face, grabbed her hair, pulled her to him and bit her scalp.
Then he is said to have thrown her head with a firm grip in all directions, pulled her hair again, threw her on the floor and punched her with his fist.
It is the version of the partner who reported Boateng.
The public prosecutor's office had originally charged him with dangerous bodily harm, but the court did not consider the charge to be fulfilled.
S. confirms the version in court. The 31-year-old lives in Berlin, where she works as a correctional officer in the women's prison, and their children live with Jèrôme Boateng. S. wears sneakers with her trouser suit, she avoids looking at the dock, she formulates her answers to the many questions clearly and calmly.
"It was totally terrifying," she describes the moment when Boateng attacked her. She then withdrew with her friend in their hotel pavilion, but expected another attack. “I know it by now. I knew there was more to come. ”Her lawyer sits next to her. S. takes their hair, shows how Boateng grabbed it back then. "He spit and spat on me." Judge Dingerdissen wants to know how she knew that Boateng had bitten her in the head. "He's bitten me several times."
Her statement gives an insight into the life of a couple that is like a roller coaster: S. and Boateng met in 2007, separated and reconciled, became parents of twins in 2011, and got engaged in 2014.
Since 2015 they have been arguing about the right of residence of children who live with their father and a nanny in Grünwald.
Boateng had parallel relationships, says S., and had a third child with another woman.
"Our relationship has always been turbulent, toxic." He humiliated and intimidated her.
According to her, attacks like those in the Caribbean were the order of the day.
Why didn't she report him earlier?
You missed the time to isolate yourself, to get out, to report Boateng.
Although she had the will to do so.
"It's not easy to stand trial with someone like him."
Jèrôme Boateng has repeatedly put pressure on them to withdraw the charges against him.
"He would never have stopped treating me like his own." Public prosecutor Eckert wants to know: "Was there a time when there were no attacks?" Answer: "When we haven't seen each other."
Jèrôme Boateng describes his version to the court.
The accused of assaults sound more harmless to him, the tone remains disturbing.
Boateng speaks of a vacation in a "super mood".
In the luxury resort with a private beach and butler, he, S., their two daughters and friends would have spent wonderful days.
"We laughed a lot." Until July 19, when the children were already in bed and the adults were playing cards.
In Boateng's version, he initially felt provoked, then mobbed by S., who called him a "son of a bitch" and accused him of cheating. They yelled at each other that he had jumped up, threw a pillow at S., glasses and a lantern had fallen over; with his foot he accidentally pushed the cooler bag in the direction of S. “I was pissed off, disappointed. Why this unnecessary argument and the theater? "
The butler swept up the broken pieces. »I said: Sorry for the mess!«, Boateng remembers and claims to have sought a conversation with S. afterwards. She hit him on the lip and blood splattered. "I pushed her - I would say not so hard - pushed her." S. fell down. Boateng stands up and recreates the scene. "You're ruining the vacation," he called. Not more. The next day, according to him, people sat in close harmony by the campfire, danced and celebrated. "Ms. S. was in a good mood." Videos are played in the courtroom that actually show S. on the beach, lively, cheerful. She did not report him until three months later.
"We try hard not to wash dirty laundry," emphasizes Boateng's lawyer Kai Walden.
But then Boateng tells how aggressive S. can be, how she urged him to insure her, to give her a house, a car, a monthly allowance.
She always started with the topic.
The friend, who was on vacation on the island at the time, confirms Boateng's version that he threw a pillow at S. and the lantern merely fell from the table.
But she describes how Boateng hit S. and insulted her.
She told him that too: "Hitting a woman - that's the bottom drawer."
The lawyer, who has been supporting S. on family law issues for years, reports how S. called her at night from the Caribbean: "Jérôme hit me again." Days later, S. appeared in her Berlin office wearing sunglasses.
At 8 p.m., Judge Dingerdissen announced the verdict and emphasized how much this process was shaped by great media interest.
He let the victim's lawyer know that the accused had also "been through something" due to the special circumstances.
Boateng looks counted.
"Testimony against testimony"?
His defense attorney had spoken of a "classic testimony-versus-testimony constellation" and demanded an acquittal. Prosecutor Eckert had demanded a monetary requirement of 1.5 million euros and a prison sentence of one and a half years - suspended on probation. That would have been interesting, because on this day of the trial, of all things, "other victims" reported to the public prosecutor. It can be assumed that these are women who have met professional footballers in recent years.
Regardless of possible new investigations, the proceedings in the case of his former partner Kasia Lenhardt were resumed one day after her suicide.
The 25-year-old model was dead on February 9, 2021 in the apartment in Berlin that Boateng is said to have rented for her.
A week before her death, the professional footballer announced the separation: on his Instagram profile with more than seven million followers.
Shortly before, he had announced his new relationship status in the "Bild" interview, with the headline: "My ex wanted to destroy me." Destroying him and his career and taking his children away from him.
In her plea in the Munich courtroom, public prosecutor Eckert said that at the end of this trial both of them were victims: Jèrôme Boateng as well as his partner S. "They are victims of their mutual toxic relationship."