A month and a half after the indictment of former swimmer Yannick Agnel for “rape and sexual assault on a minor under 15″, the lawyers of the girl who filed a complaint last summer are breaking the silence. In the Team, master Thomas Wetterer explains in particular how Naome Horter, his client, aged 13 at the time, decided to reveal the alleged facts.
A decision taken after a long journey and triggered after having met Agnel again at the French championships in Saint-Raphaël, where he officiated as a TV consultant. « At the end of 2020, she suffered a deep malaise, describes Thomas Wetterer in The Team. She stops swimming completely, says: I don’t want to hear about it anymore. Little by little, those around her ask her what is going on because she withdraws, spends hours in her room. After a few months, she ends up spilling the beans and saying: There was a problem with Yannick, but I don’t want to talk about it. »
Passed by anorexia and depression then went abroad to study, the young woman, daughter of Lionel Horter, trainer of Yannick Agnel in 2016 at the time of the alleged facts, would then have decided to file a complaint after working with a psychiatrist.
« I’m sure there was never consent, believes Isabelle Rollet, Naome’s second lawyer. She was a child at the level of civil status, but she was also a child in her body. She was super thin, she had no awareness of her sexuality and what a woman’s life is. »
“It’s odious”
During his police custody, Yannick Agnel had recognized the materiality of the facts but had rejected the idea of constraint. It is the age difference between the champion, then 24 years old and the alleged victim, aged 13, which exposes Agnel, presumed innocent, to prosecution for acts constituting rape or sexual assault.
Recently, during its investigation, Radio France had found a witness who explained that he had noticed that “Naome was going to Yannick Agnel’s room”, during an internship in Thailand, in January 2016, the period of the first sexual intercourse between N. and the swimmer, after a first kiss on December 31, 2015. Other swimmers at the time wondered how Naome’s parents, Lionel and Marjorie Horter « could not see anything”.
Statements that make the lawyers, still in the Team, react. “Do you realize today her state of mind when she reads that her parents would not have denounced the facts, questions Me Rollet? In the mind of a young girl, it translates to are my parents going to jail? It’s odious. »
