Ex-Brazil gymnastics coach sentenced to 109 years in prison
A former Brazilian gymnastics coach has been sentenced to more than a century in prison for raping four female athletes, at least one of them a minor, local media reported Tuesday.
A court in the city of São Bernardo do Campo near Sao Paulo sentenced Fernando de Carvalho Lupech to 109 years and eight months in prison on Monday, according to Globo Esporte, which has access to the transcript, which is protected by judicial secrecy.
He was convicted of assaulting four female athletes, including a minor who was 13 at the time, according to Globo Esporte, who did not specify the ages of the other athletes.
Carvalho Lubics can still appeal the decision after he has maintained his innocence, knowing that he will not go to prison until the end of any potential appeal.
The former coach supervised young gymnasts for 20 years, before being dropped from the national team staff in 2016, a month before the Rio Olympics, after a complaint from the young athlete's parents.
He was banned from any gymnastics-related activity for life in April 2019. He faces other charges: Four years ago, some 40 athletes alleged to Globo TV that they had been subjected to psychological, physical and sexual abuse.
Some of them participated in legal proceedings as witnesses to the events that allegedly occurred between 1999 and 2016.
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