Peter Seisenbacher sentenced to prison for five years

Krone Christian Fidler

Peter Seisenbacher was sentenced to a five-year prison term. He was sentenced for severe sexual abuse of minors, sexual abuse of minors and abuse of a relationship of authority. He was found guilty of the charges in full. A Vienna regional court convicted Seisenbacher of the crimes, which took place in the Austrian capital between 1999 and 2004.

Seisenbacher abused two underage girls, one of them for several years. The first girl was only nine years old then.

Defender Bernhard Lehofer said: “Me and many, many other people are convinced of his innocence." Seisenbacher himself renounced a final word and referred to Lehofer's findings. Shortly before 16 o'clock then the verdict was announced: five years imprisonment. With a sentence of up to ten years, the court found this to be fact and guilty....

Seisenbacher showed no emotional reaction at the verdict. When asked if he had understood the verdict, the composed Seisenbacher nodded shortly. Some of his followers from judo circles seemed appalled. The presiding judge Christoph Bauer said at the beginning of his opinion, all stress witnesses had made an "extremely credible" impression: "We did not have the impression that the three lie, that the three were wrong, that the three have conspired against each other. "

Seisenbacher won the Olympic gold medal in the U86kg at the Olympic Games in Los Angeles in 1984 and defended his title four years later in Seoul.

An international warrant for his arrest was issued in December 2016 when he failed to appear at a court hearing in Vienna.

He was eventually tracked to Ukraine after seven months on the run before being handed over to Austrian prosecutors in September 2017. Seisenbacher was handed over to the Austrian authorities in September 2019.

The verdict is not final: Seisenbacher's lawyer asked for reflection, the prosecutor made no statement for now.