Vienna: An Austrian court sentenced Monday former Olympic judo gold medallist Peter Seisenbacher to five years in jail after he was found guilty of sexually abusing two girls he coached from the late 1990s to the early 2000s.
Seisenbacher abused one of the two girls from the age of nine with the abuse lasting several years, according to the verdict. The second girl was 13 when the abuse started. A third woman says Seisenbacher tried to sexually abuse her at a holiday camp when she was 16.
Passing down the sentence, judge Christoph Bauer said the three testifying against Seisenbacher seemed ‘extraordinarily credible’.
“We didn’t have the impression that the three lied, that they were mistaken, or that they colluded,” Bauer said.
Seisenbacher, who was facing a maximum penalty of 10 years, had said that he was innocent of the charges at the start of the trial a week ago.
The verdict can be appealed from both sides. Prosecutors here issued an international warrant for the now 59-year-old’s arrest after he failed to show up for a court hearing in the Austrian capital in December 2016.
Seisenbacher was located in Ukraine in 2017 after seven months on the run and handed over to Austria in September. He won middleweight gold at the Los Angeles Olympic Games in 1984 and again in Seoul four years later.
Agencies