The Prosecutor’s Office requests 14 years in prison and the private prosecution up to 18 for the former coach and former sports director of the Lointek Gernika basketball club, Mario López for a “continued” crime of sexual assault of one of his players since she was 13 years old. The trial will be held between January 14 and 16 at the Provincial Court of Bizkaia. In addition to the 14-year prison sentence, the Public Ministry requests that López be completely disqualified, pay the costs, and be prohibited from approaching the Biscayan town of Gernika, where the victim resides, for a period of ten years. compensate her with 20,000 euros. For its part, the private prosecution will request in the trial 18 years and nine months in prison for continued sexual assault in addition to compensation of 150,000 euros for moral and social damage.
The facts became public in December 2023 after an article from ‘El País’ which had the testimony of the victim who denounces the sexual assaults committed by López. They date back to the summer of 1998, when the victim was 13 years old and studying at the Allende Salazar school. López was her coach there, and, according to the woman, who is now 39 years old, the abuse lasted three years. The complaint included that the victim suffered “countless anal penetration and fellatios,” in addition to pressure and threats. All of these facts have been proven in the criminal investigation. The Prosecutor’s Office emphasizes that López “benefited” from a difficult family situation to be alone with the victim and commit crimes that grew in severity.
According to the Prosecutor’s Office, the accused sought and took advantage of moments to be alone with the then minor, benefiting from the family situation and the absence of parental care and control. With the excuse of training or basketball perfection, he invited her to his house, forced her to talk to him on the phone daily and took advantage of the trips and stays to have meetings with him to commit sexual assaults.
The Spanish Basketball Federation – López was also a coach of the national team – assures that it only had “partial knowledge of this matter based on a complaint against the club received on October 29,” 2023. After what happened, according to the Prosecutor’s Office , the woman has been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and has required psychological and psychiatric treatment.
Like every year since the complaint became known, the feminist movement of Gernika called a demonstration on December 14 to show its support for the victim and condemn the events. After the mobilization, they denounced that, today, there are “accomplices” who perpetuate the silence in the face of the event. They also criticized the management of the basketball team, whom they accused of “not really assuming their responsibility.” “The lies, manipulations and big mistakes accepted with small mouths have not served as reparation at all and they have not been able to respond adequately, not even a year later. The most serious thing is that they are not even interested in doing it,” the feminist movement denounces.
They have also criticized the Gernika City Council (led by the independent party Guztiontzako Herria) who have been asked to create “a table to address sexual violence in the world of sport”, but to this day “they still have no response”. “Fortunately, citizens have not wanted to look the other way. We have shown our support for the woman who reported the sexual violence she received when she was a minor, to whom, following our maxim ‘entzun eta eratzun’, we have listened and responded. Because we know the trial will not be tender and also because we know that in the face of sexual violence the Penal Code is not enough. Therefore, whatever is resolved in the courts, we will always say: ‘We believe you and we are with you,’” they assert.
Criticism of the feminist movement regarding the attitude of Lointek Gernika
After the complaint was made public, feminist groups from Gernika and the rest of Euskadi came out to protest. denounce what happened and the position of the club, which they accused of “knowing and hiding” the sexual assault, in several mobilizations and demonstrations, while the club announced that it will appear as a private prosecutor in the proceedings opened against López. “We came forward first because the club has been the victim of deception. Second, because the court has understood that we did not have to be called as an offended party to appear and third, because we do not know what happened. As of today, we do not have the complaint, the press has more information than we do (…) It is not conceivable that someone has informed the members of the club that the person who is there with his daughters has a complaint for continued sexual assault of minors and that those people were allowing it. I have seen them completely collapsed. What do we understand has failed? The system. Perhaps the complainant did not want to say it for her own protection and if someone had committed it she did not want it to be known. All this can be done better. The response of the system, and I include the club, has been insufficient,” argued the lawyer in the first Lointek Gernika press conference since the news was revealed that López, who at that time was responsible for the internal and sporting management of the club and had previously been a women’s basketball coach and former coach of the U-19 and U-18 women’s categories, he had an open judicial procedure for an alleged case of continued sexual assault.
From The feminist movement harshly criticizes the club’s words and denounces that “they knew and hid” what happened. “We met on July 3 with the vice president, Amaia Lezamiz, and we conveyed to her the information we had and two requests: the first, that he be removed from the summer camp with minors and the second that he not continue being a coach since we understood that it was something incomprehensible if we wanted to seek reparation for the victim,” they detail.
“They tell us to be calm, that the campus would end the next day. However, they also tell us that it will be difficult to replace him because it was not easy to find a coach of his level and prestige. Although we understand that this prestige has been acquired over the years by silencing what he did. As we did not want to make public what was happening, we decided to give them time to find another coach to replace him,” they maintain. However, that replacement did not arrive. “On August 24 we found out through the media that Mario López will continue to be coach of the women’s team. When we spoke to the club we were told that together, including the players, they decided to keep him as coach. At that moment we decided to break the dialogue with the club. We ended up with a strange feeling, what was happening didn’t make sense to us, so we decided to try to talk to the players, to find out what they had been told,” they explain from the feminist movement.
After trying to talk to some of the Lointek Gernika players, but without receiving a response, the members of the feminist movement once again receive a call from the club, this time to insist that they “stop coercing” their players. “They tell us ‘you’ll be happy, you’re not going to be a coach anymore’ and of course, at that moment we felt a strange rush, but everything disappeared when we found out that he was no longer a coach, but they kept him in charge of internal and sports management. They passed him from one position of power to another,” they lament.
“We were very surprised that the club released a statement saying that they did not know the facts. Are they also going to say that they didn’t meet with us? It doesn’t make any sense, it’s a lie that will end up being known. We don’t know how many people knew what was happening, but we do know that the club knew and hid what we also knew. What we have had in mind all this time is the eternal doubt of whether there have been more victims, we don’t know, but we are not sure, that is why it has been important to make it public,” they say from the movement, which has at all times had contact with the victim to inform him of each step that was being taken and have his approval.
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