Justice
BGH partially overturns judgment against ex-football coach
The judgment of the Frankfurt am Main regional court against a former youth football coach was heard before the Federal Court of Justice (BGH). photo
© Uli Deck/dpa
The Frankfurt regional court sentenced an ex-youth football coach from Hesse to a long prison sentence for, among other things, sexual abuse of children. Now the BGH partially overturned the judgment.
Last March, the regional court sentenced the then 35-year-old to a prison sentence of twelve years and nine months for serious rape, sexual abuse of children and young people, and other sexual and physical offenses. The youth protection chamber also ordered subsequent preventive detention. The regional court assumed 69 individual cases. In the period between 2014 and 2021 there were eleven people affected.
Error of the court
The defendant appealed and complained, with a so-called procedural complaint, that the publicity of the trial had not been restored after the interrogation of a victim on the day of the main hearing. This procedural error now led to the annulment of the conviction in seven cases, the overall sentence, the order of preventive detention and the confiscation of his assets, as the violation had no impact on them.
Another youth protection chamber of the regional court must now renegotiate and decide on the seven annulled cases, the overall sentence as well as a possible order of preventive detention and the confiscation decision.
The case
According to the court, the defendant used his position at the time to contact male teenagers and children. Using a simulated threat scenario, he got her to perform sexual acts on him. He sometimes secretly sedated her with sleeping pills in drinks or chocolate and then sexually abused her.
Between summer 2019 and October 2021, the man worked as a youth coach for a Hessian football club. According to the Frankfurt public prosecutor’s office, children and young people from the club were not affected.