Former swimming champion Yannick Agnel to be tried for rape
By The New Obs with AFP
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Yannick Agnel is suspected of having a relationship in 2016 with Naomé Horter, the daughter of the swimmer's coach, while he was staying with the latter. He was 24 years old and she was only 13. He has always maintained that the relationship was consensual and loving. PASCAL GUYOT / AFP
Former Olympic swimming champion Yannick Agnel will be tried for the rape of his coach's daughter, the Mulhouse prosecutor announced on Thursday, May 15, nine years after the alleged incident.
The swimmer is suspected of having had a relationship with the teenager in 2016, when he was staying with his coach, when he was 24 years old and she was only 13. He has always maintained that the relationship was consensual and loving.
The former champion, now 33, "was charged before the Haut-Rhin departmental criminal court" with the rape of a minor under the age of 15, Mulhouse public prosecutor Nicolas Heitz said in a statement. He is also being prosecuted for sexual assault against the same victim. However, he was dismissed for sexual assault against a minor over the age of 15 involving another person, the prosecutor said.
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Yannick Agnel remains presumed innocent and can appeal this dismissal, added Nicolas Heitz, who had requested the indictment on March 7. He remains under judicial supervision.
The referral order specifies that the facts occurred between December 31, 2015 and August 31, 2016 in different locations: Mulhouse and the nearby town of Riedisheim, in Thailand and in Spain (in Tenerife and Sierra Nevada).
Agnel "recognized the materiality of the alleged facts"The investigation began in the summer of 2021 following a complaint filed by Naomé Horter, the daughter of the swimmer's former coach, Lionel Horter. The teenager was also a member of the club at the time but has since given up swimming.
The investigation led to the swimmer being charged five months later, on December 11, 2021. After 48 hours in police custody , Yannick Agnel "admitted the facts alleged, even if he has a memory problem for some of the rapes," explained the then public prosecutor, Edwige Roux-Morizot.
Yannick Agnel has always denied any influence he had over the young woman . But Edwige Roux-Morizot believed that "the facts constitute rape and sexual assault due to the age difference, because the justice system considers that there is a real moral constraint."
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