On Wednesday, a former coach of a football club near Toulouse was sentenced to eight years in prison for sexual assault on minors.
The 54-year-old man will also have to undergo socio-legal monitoring for five years.
The rape charges were, however, dismissed by the criminal court.
A former coach of a football club in the suburbs of Toulouse was sentenced Wednesday to eight years in prison for sexually assaulting around 20 teenagers from 2007 to 2020.
This 54-year-old man, a former member of a football club in Aussonne, near Toulouse, is also sentenced for possession of pornographic images of minors.
The Toulouse Criminal Court also sentenced him to five years of socio-judicial monitoring.
However, charges of rape were dismissed after the investigation.
"It's a fair sentence, commensurate with the gravity of what has been done"
The prosecutor had requested 9 years of imprisonment and three years of socio-judicial follow-up during the hearing of July 28. "It is a fair sentence, up to the gravity of what was committed and the high number of victims," said Nelly Magendie, the lawyer for the civil parties. "There are shattered lives, young people who have sunk into drugs, who turn their anger on them, who are still in great suffering today," she added.
For his part, Alain Rouillé, the lawyer for the former coach, described the sentence as "severe".
"The court did not hold enough that he collaborated, that he recognized his actions and that he expressed sincere regret," he said.
On the other hand, "the psychological and psychiatric expertises show that he was not aware of the suffering that he caused".
An "obvious" manipulation
According to Mr. Magendie, although he acknowledged the facts, he denied "the manipulation" that the lawyer considers "obvious". She recalls that, under the guise of cutting their hair for free, he locked himself once a month with each of the boys concerned in a locker room. He then made the boy take a shower and dried him from top to bottom, offered to shave his pubis, masturbate him or blow into his penis.
"He says that this locker room was the most practical, while it was the deepest. He also doesn't say that he coaxed them with treats," among other things going in the direction of "manipulation ", underlines Me Magendie.
"It was displayed as psychological support when the children were going through difficult times," she said, stressing the "hold" of this man on his victims.
However, for the defense lawyer, "the border between what was prohibited and what was not was not clear to him".
His victims "played tennis with him, wanted to see him again".
"He had nothing in his life. He was like a child himself," he adds.