A man has been convicted of raping an athlete he coached and his girlfriend in Marseille, France, after he was caught during a television interview denying having abused them. He had reportedly met the Olympian on a dating app, before forcing himself on her. The athlete had been coached by Dominique Trouillot, whose criminal conviction on Thursday brings to 27 the number of men who have been accused by victims of rape and sexual assault while the accused were coaching Olympians in the country.
The Daily Mail reports that French judoka Djamila Consialef, a member of France’s 2012 Olympics team, first had sex with the coach outside her apartment, and then returned the following evening. When she demanded more money and stopped accepting his advances, Trouillot began punching her. At some point, he forced himself on her. “I was afraid he would kill me,” she said. When he returned the next night, she said, he threatened to kill her, too.
Eventually, she was able to leave and go home to her parents’ house. After her parents met up with the coach, she said she realized what he had done, and spent most of the next day with her mother in a car parked in the garage before finding a friend and taking her first steps home. “I thought I was dead,” she said.
The force with which Trouillot and his girlfriend were pushed in public turned out to be not so much of a force at all, if any. Trouillot had actually dropped his phone in the process, making it impossible for police to immediately trace him. He was only detained after a journalist for a national television station, who was about to interview Trouillot about the rape, grabbed it and called the police. “I have no other explanation than to suspect that it was Dominique Trouillot who had forced himself on me,” said the girl, who was eventually able to escape the house with the help of her two sisters, a police officer, and two friends. She was later referred to a specialist clinic for therapy.
Trouillot, for his part, insisted the relationship had been consensual. “We were intimate, and then she said she didn’t want to do it anymore,” he said. “At that moment she was furious and began punching me.” He also said he had no memory of what had happened during the night’s festivities.
According to Nieuwsblad.com, the woman and her sister, who also encountered Trouillot, said they had been “incredibly lucky.” “You need this type of shock,” said her sister. “It’s not a wise strategy to get back with someone who abused you.”
Read the full story at The Daily Mail.
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