Justice ruled in favor of the footballer’s ex-wife. At the end of a long day of hearing, the magistrates found him guilty of assault and battery. The high-level athlete received a heavy penalty. The Munich court sentenced Jérôme Boateng to a fine of 1.8 million euros for having violated his ex-girlfriend. The latter faced up to five years’ imprisonment.
This Thursday, the defender of the Olympique Lyonnais Jérôme Boateng had however refuted the accusations of violence brought against him by the mother of his two children, before the court of Munich (south) where he is tried for having hit and injured her in 2018.
According to prosecution spokeswoman Anne Leiding, the 33-year-old star player, former Bayern Munich player and 2014 world champion, “first threw a lantern at (the victim), he missed it. He cursed at her and threw an insulated box at her which hit her in the upper right part of her body, particularly her arm, which injured her, ”she explained.
Boateng says he “was not violent”
The footballer, who faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison, responded for nearly two hours to these accusations, and developed his own version of the incident, which occurred during a vacation in the Caribbean in July 2018, just after the pitiful elimination of Germany in the first round of the World Cup in Russia. According to him, it was his companion at the time who was aggressive and who even injured him on the lip by hitting him. “I was not violent […] I did not attack her, ”he assured.
His victim, on the other hand, maintained his version: “He stuck my eye with his thumb”, she said, “he bit my head and pulled me to the ground by the hair”. The ex-couple are currently on trial to obtain custody of their 10-year-old twins, who live with Jérôme Boateng. This question of child custody is also, indirectly, one of the challenges of the Munich trial.
Private drama
The player made the headlines in early September when he signed for two years with Olympique Lyonnais, after a decade crowned with multiple titles at Bayern Munich. He was at the end of his contract with Munich, where he won two Champions Leagues and nine German league titles. But with the approach of the trial, the spotlight has once again turned to his private life, which provokes a lot of exchanges and comments – sometimes vigorous – on social networks, and makes the cabbage of the press.
Earlier this year, Boateng experienced a private tragedy when his last girlfriend Kasia Lenhardt, whom he had just left a few days earlier, was found dead in an apartment in Berlin. Justice concluded that it was a suicide. Boateng was at that time traveling to Qatar with Bayern where he was playing the Club World Cup. He immediately returned to Germany. She also accused him of having abused her, before retracting, according to the Munich daily. Süddeutsche Zeitung. The Munich court could deliver its judgment this Thursday.