Peter Seisenbacher: Austrian judo champion jailed for child sex abuse Published duration 2 December 2019

image copyright Reuters image caption Peter Seisenbacher denied the charges

An Austrian judo trainer and Olympic champion, Peter Seisenbacher, has been sentenced to five years in jail for sexually abusing two girls he coached.

One girl was nine when the abuse started, the other was 13. The abuse took place in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the Vienna court found.

A third woman says Seisenbacher, 59, tried to sexually abuse her at a holiday camp when she was 16.

He denied the charges. He won two Olympic gold medals, in 1984 and 1988.

The presiding judge told the court: "We didn't have the impression that the three lied, that they were mistaken, or that they jointly conspired." Seisenbacher can appeal against the sentence.

Seisenbacher's trial had been scheduled to start in December 2016 but he disappeared and resurfaced in Georgia in 2017, then moved on to Ukraine. He was handed over to Austria in September.

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