Coach Vito L. (name changed), who raped 25 young people at a football club in the Munich district over a period of six years and committed sexual assaults against them, has to go to prison for seven years and six months. The Youth Chamber at the Munich I Regional Court refrained from ordering preventive detention. “It’s crazy,” said presiding judge Stephan Kirchinger, “we have over 600 crimes.”
The auditorium is full: many young men who also testified against L. are watching the trial, as is his wife. The defendant is wearing jeans, a black track jacket and sneakers. The 47-year-old repeatedly buries his face in his hands, crouches on the dock, never directing his gaze towards the spectators. Not even when the judge gives him the last word.
Vito L. cries, his voice fails, he whimpers quietly towards the judge’s bench. He says he wants to apologize to the former players and come to terms with what happened. He pauses and wipes a tear from his face. “I would like to have a perspective for my family,” says the father of two.
From 2014 to 2020, L. was head coach for all of the club’s youth teams at the football club in the Munich district. There he also posed as a physiotherapist and called in the young footballers for “treatments”. These should promote blood circulation and relax the muscles. In fact, he grabbed the teenager’s private parts. The crime scene was locker room 2 at the club, but the attacks also took place in the home and in training camps. In the end, the chamber convicted the trainer of 153 counts of rape and 488 counts of sexual assault.
L. confessed and spared the victims from having to appear in court
Shortly after the trial began, everyone involved agreed in a legal discussion that if the defendant confessed, the sentence would not be more than eight years in prison. However, at the end of the hearing, the court announced that ordering preventive detention would also be considered. Vito L. made a confession – and thus spared the injured parties a personal appearance in court. However, the judge added in his ruling, the defendant could have personally apologized to the few injured parties who appeared in court. “He missed that chance.”
The youth criminal chamber was not of the opinion that the trainer had set up a system to abuse people. But he knew exactly what position he represented in the club and he took advantage of that to commit the crimes. In its verdict, the chamber assumed 25 teenagers and young men had been harmed, “but that is certainly just the tip of the iceberg.”
In her plea, public prosecutor Susanne Kempter described the defendant as a “dangerous serial offender” who may also be at risk of abusing his own sons one day. L. is “a classic, gifted and power-hungry man-catcher.” She demanded a prison sentence of eight years and subsequent preventive detention.
L.’s two defense attorneys had considered seven years’ imprisonment to be “sufficient.” They spoke out against preventative detention because there was “no danger” on the part of their client. He said of his client: “He wants it to come out that he’s not just a bad person.” Discipline, punishment, manipulative action – according to the defense, these are the tools of a trainer. Statements that make some viewers shake their heads.
The court refrained from imposing preventive detention. The chamber was of the opinion that the defendant had “a tendency to commit these acts again and again”. And you can also see how dangerous the defendant is. But “if he is honest with himself” and undergoes therapy in prison, it is assumed that he will no longer be dangerous after serving his prison sentence.