The former coach of the Brazilian national gymnastics team Fernando de Carvalho Lopes was sentenced to 109 years and eight months in prison for the rape of four athletes, including at least one minor, local media reported Tuesday.
Source: AFP
The former Brazilian technician was sentenced in the first instance on Monday by a court in the city of Sao Bernardo do Campo, near Sao Paulo, according to the Globo Esporte portal, which agreed to the process, protected by judicial secrecy.
Carvalho Lopes, who will appeal for being innocent, so he can await the appeal in freedom, was convicted of assaulting four athletes, one of whom was 13 years old at the time of the events, according to the media, which did not specify the ages of others.
However, there are more accusations against him: four years ago, 42 athletes claimed to have been victims of moral, physical or sexual abuse by the coach in a journalistic investigation of the TV Globo program Fantástico.
Some of them participate in the judicial process as witnesses to events that would have occurred between 1999 and 2016, when the former technician directed the MESC club in Sao Bernardo do Campo.
Carvalho Lopes trained young gymnasts for about twenty years and was removed from the national team a month before the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics, following a complaint by the parents of one of his alleged victims.
The man was part of the Brazilian team’s working group between 2014 and 2016, when he trained Diego Hypólito, a silver medalist at the Rio Games, a source from the Brazilian Gymnastics Confederation explained to AFP.
Hypólito assured at the time that he was not a victim of abuse, but as a result of the wave of stories he supported the complainants.
In April 2019, the Superior Court of Sports Justice (STJD) banned Carvalho Lopes for life from exercising any activity related to sports.
In recent years gymnastics has been involved in numerous scandals.
In the United States, Larry Nassar, a former national team doctor, has been jailed for life for sexually assaulting at least 265 top-level gymnasts over two decades, including legend Simone Biles.
In Great Britain, Greece, Australia or New Zealand athletes also reported different types of abuse by coaches.
