A former coach and manager of football clubs in the Lyon area was sentenced this Thursday in Lyon to 15 years of imprisonment for rape and sexual violence against minor players. Tried behind closed doors by the Rhône criminal court, the 67-year-old accused, with a round face and white ponytail, was found guilty of having abused his position for the rape of two boys aged around ten years between 1989 and 1996 and the attack on five minors between 1993 and 1998 and in 2018.
Fifteen years of imprisonment had been requested against the sixty-year-old who, according to his lawyer Me Samir Bellasri, will appeal the decision. The facts all took place in an educational context or in the supervision of minors dismissed from football clubs, and took place in particular during trips around matches.
The sentence was accompanied by 10 years of socio-judicial monitoring with a care injunction and a definitive ban on carrying out any activity in contact with minors, following the requisitions of the public prosecutor. The accused risked up to 20 years in prison. “He’s a certain age, did that play a role? It remains a relatively high sentence, there were very young victims,” reacted to AFP Me Stéphanie Zahnd-Cartier, the lawyer for two civil parties, declaring herself “rather satisfied” with the verdict.
“No empathy for the victims”
During the trial which opened on Wednesday, the accused contested the facts of rape, some of which he had admitted during the investigation. He admitted to acts of assault, according to the parties’ lawyers. “My client contested certain facts which, despite everything, were recognized against him. (…) He remains in his position,” indicated Me Bellasri. “He didn’t express any regrets, other than the fact that he shouldn’t have done that to avoid being incarcerated. He has no empathy for the victims,” nor “explanations,” according to Me Zahnd-Cartier.
Coach then manager of the Martel Caluire club between 1981 and 1998, of AS des Buers in Villeurbanne (Rhône) between 2016 and 2021, the accused was then a volunteer at Olympique Lyonnais between 2018 and 2021. In 2020, a victim had finally decided to denounce him after having chanced upon him again. The facts were then prescribed but his complaint of rape had triggered the opening of an investigation, which made it possible to identify the other victims.
“We are quite terrified by the loneliness of these children in the face of the attacker. None were able to report the facts to anyone within the club,” declared Me Agnès Bouquin, counsel for a victim, deploring that the accused had supervised “hundreds of children”.
