“
It is a relief for all the victims.
It was a real way of the cross for them: between the filing of complaints and the judgment delivered last night, 7 years have passed,
”recalls Me Didier Leick, the lawyer for the first two victims, aged 12 and 15 at the time of the facts.
Former tennis coach Andrew Geddes, who worked for the prestigious Sarcelles du Val-d'Oise club and the Levallois Sporting Club (LSC), was sentenced on appeal on Wednesday January 13 by the Yvelines Assize Court in eighteen years of criminal imprisonment for the rape of several of his former underage students.
The events took place from 1999 to 2005 and from 2009 to 2014.
Read also: A former tennis coach at the assizes for rape of four former students
"Control process"
The modus operandi used by the accused was very similar in the four cases: "
there was a form of colonization of the parental couple, to whom he rendered many services and to whom he was sometimes invited for lunch, then he created a link. very hard with the player in order to set up a control mechanism.
One of the expressions that came up the most during the trial was that 'he handled hot and cold all the time,'
"
Leick
told
Figaro
.
The victims, their relatives, but also the former companions and mistresses of the accused all spoke of "
a kind of magnetism that he exerted on adults
" and a "
very particular aura
".
The best friend of one of the victims, who was however aware of what the young girls were undergoing with him, in this sense declared in writing that she had despite everything "
completely fallen under his influence
".
Filmed sex
His first victim, then 12 years old, claims to have been raped nearly 400 times by his former coach, until she was 14 years old.
The second, about 350 times.
Andrew Geddes' modus operandi was always the same: it began during a tennis camp in La Baule, on the Atlantic coast, far from the parental home, where the girls were all raped for the first time.
Then the assaults followed: "
in his car in poorly lit parking lots or in the club's toilets
", Andrew Geddes carried out "
vaginal, digital, anal penetrations and forced them to perform blowjobs
", reports Me Nicolas Cassart, lawyer for one of the civil parties.
The reports were filmed, and the coach used them to obtain the silence of his victims.
"
Geddes threatened the girls to reveal everything, to show their parents the oral sex scenes he had filmed
", explains Me Cassart.
While the accused denied the facts for years, at the trial, the latter affirmed "
that the materiality of the facts was indisputable
", report the lawyers of the victims, but "
he displayed a great ambivalence as regards the consent, evoking in particular romantic relationships
”.
"
The accused also claimed that he was not aware of his act at the time, but that now he realized what he had done
", added one of the lawyers.
Andrew Geddes was sentenced to 18 years in prison, or 2 years less than the maximum, "
the probability of an appeal is therefore high,
" said Me Cassart.
