A 42-year-old athletic trainer was indicted for rape mid-week in Versailles. This employee of the Athletic Club of the West (CAO), based in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, is suspected of having raped at least seven young girls, aged 16 to 17 years over whom he had authority as sports educator, between 2011 and 2019. The forties was released under judicial supervision after his appearance before the investigating judge.
This case broke out last December 30. A technical manager of the Ile-de-France Athletics League (Lifa) receives a call from a former member of the club. He reports that girls from the CAO have had a collective awareness of the abuses they are victims of. The National Technical Directorate and the Presidency of the League are immediately notified. Arnaud Péricard, the mayor (DVD) of the city, decides the next day to inform the police station and the public prosecutor, who opens a preliminary investigation for sexual harassment and rape committed on a minor over 15 years old.
He denies any form of coercion in the face of investigators
Saint-Germain security investigators are conducting the investigations and collecting the testimony of several victims. They explain that at the time, they could not resist the sexual demands of their athletic teacher, but that when they thought about it, they became aware of the unhealthy nature of these relationships. Their educator held them under his psychological influence and drove them to low-cost hotels to abuse them. "The difficulty for justice is to characterize non-consent when the young girls are over the age of 15 and have not suffered any violence or physical coercion from the author", explains a source close to the case.
On Tuesday, the investigators summoned the athletic teacher to the police station before questioning him for forty-eight hours. During his hearings, the forties denied any form of coercion. “He maintains that all these young girls were consenting. He even claims that some of these relationships were common knowledge and were kindly accepted by the parents of adolescent girls. ” The rest of the investigations will take a long time. New victims may come forward. The police will have to hear about three hundred witnesses who attended the coach. "It will be necessary to interview all the athletes for whom he was responsible, but also all those around him who may have seen or heard things that will make it possible to better understand the nature of the troubled relationships that this man had with adolescent girls."
