The Castellón Provincial Prosecutor’s Office has requested 18 years in prison for a continuous crime of sexual assault against VMG, a 58-year-old tennis instructor in the province of Castellón. The events occurred between September 2022 and April 2023. The accused, in prison since April 24 of last year, was a tennis teacher for the minor, who was 14 years old when the events occurred and he was 56. In the list of licensed technicians that can be consulted on the website of the Spanish federation, the accused appears as a national tennis instructor (level 1 qualified), that is, “a teacher trained to teach and train players at the basic levels of initiation to tennis.”
According to the prosecution’s indictment, to which this newspaper has had access, the alleged aggressor “using the trust that the minor’s parents had in him, began to take an interest in her sports performance, giving her more dedication than the rest of the students, picking up the minor himself at his house to take her to training and also taking her to the tennis court to a home he owns in Vall de Uxó (Castellón).” He did not live in that home, according to the document, but he had a gym set up in that home. With the excuse of doing physical training, VMG took the girl. In that home, the minor allegedly suffered the attacks starting in September 2022; The accused, always according to her writing, got her pregnant. She is awaiting trial, for which there is no date yet.
The sexual assaults began with touching “with the clear intention of satisfying their sexual desires,” according to the prosecution, and ended with at least 10 penetrations. The coach asked the minor to take off her shirt so “he could feel her breasts” with the excuse that it was necessary “to prevent illnesses,” according to the letter. When the minor, intimidated, moved away, he told her that these things between student and teacher were “normal”, that she should “let go” because to have “a good sporting performance” they had to have a “good connection”, that the relationship had that “flow” since they were going to “spend a lot of time together.”
On another occasion, and after putting mats on the floor and making the minor lie down to stretch, he tried to convince her that “orgasms were good for relaxing” and that “many athletes did it.” He invited her to try it and the minor refused. On a third occasion, always according to her indictment, the accused made him take off her underwear to treat an injury to her abductor muscle that was painful; he told her to let go. The minor first asked him to stop and then asked him “repeatedly to get off of her, which she didn’t want,” and instead he raped her. She would do it, according to the Prosecutor’s Office, on another dozen occasions in the following three months. He also forced her to masturbate him. The minor had reported wrist pain during training and the accused considered that she had to move her wrist to “relax it.”
When on April 23 of last year the minor told him that her period was not getting off, the accused, according to the Prosecutor’s Office, “got down on his knees and begged her not to say anything to her parents, to tell them that she had kept sexual relations with another minor and that nothing would happen, otherwise, he would end up in jail.” The young woman became pregnant and underwent a voluntary termination of pregnancy. Due to the facts, in addition to the 18 years in prison, the Prosecutor’s Office also requests a 20-year disqualification from activities that involve contact with minors, the prohibition of approaching less than 500 meters from the victim and communicating with her for a period of 28 years. The payment of 50,000 euros in compensation and expenses for the medical care provided to the minor by the Ministry of Health of the Generalitat Valenciana is also requested.
The Provincial Court of Castellón already sentenced an artistic gymnastics coach from the Betxí Gymnastics Club to 15 and a half years in prison in November 2020 for sexual abuse of minors. In the investigation that this newspaper has undertaken into abuses in sports, 1,132 victims and 206 cases have been recorded so far. It is quite common, when sexual assaults occur in sports, for coaches to consider that one of their tasks is to give massages, despite not having a qualification, as a way to approach boys and girls. Hence, protection delegates insist on the importance of defining the competencies of technicians and monitors and making minors see that coaches are only coaches, not physiotherapists.
If you know of any case of abuse in Spanish sport that has not seen the light, you can write to: [email protected]
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