The 70-year-old man had already been sentenced to prison for sexual assaults on two teenagers.
A figure in kayaking in France, Jean-Yves Prigent, already sentenced this summer to prison for sexual assault on two teenagers, was indicted and imprisoned this Thursday, November 7 for rape, assault and sexual harassment of minors, announced the Rennes public prosecutor’s office. The Breton coach, aged 70, was placed in police custody on Tuesday in this case.
Former canoe-kayak world champion and ex-national coach in this discipline, Jean-Yves Prigent was sentenced in July to four years in prison, including one year with an electronic bracelet and three years with suspended probation, for two sexual assaults on minors over fifteen years old. But alongside this procedure, “new acts of sexual assault and sexual harassment have been denounced against Jean-Yves Prigent”explains in a press release the public prosecutor of Rennes, Frédéric Teillet.
A young man whom the coach had supervised while he was a minor had thus reported “Acts of sexual assault dating from a period between 2005 and 2008”when he was a minor. As for sexual harassment, a young woman denounced repeated comments by Jean-Yves Prigent “with sexual connotations against him”. Finally, in September 2024, one of the two victims of the first procedure judged this summer, “a young man having been trained by Jean-Yves Prigent, denounced new acts of rape committed against him” between 2023 and 2024, during sports competitions taking place in Prague (Czech Republic) and Bourg-Saint-Maurice (Savoie).
Very influential in the world of kayaking
In police custody, the accused “partially admitted the facts of rape but contests the facts of sexual assault and harassment”underlines Frédéric Teillet. After his indictment, he was placed in pre-trial detention “in accordance with the requisitions of the prosecution”he specifies. The coach, very influential in the small world of French kayaking, admitted the attacks this summer before the Rennes court.
He admitted to having “caressed the penis” of two teenagers that he was training and who were sleeping, at his invitation, in the same bunk as him in his camper van. “I have regrets and remorse every day”the defendant repeated during the hearing, evoking a “exit from the road”. The lawyer for the civil parties, Me Thomas Serrand, however, denounced a “well-established control process”refuting the thesis of “isolated acts”.
Source: www.liberation.fr
