Former Olympic hopeful Thierry Pellerin was sentenced to five years in prison for having lured young boys who were under his responsibility at the gymnastics club where he was a coach, in addition to filming them in the locker room toilets.
Judge Alain Morand rendered his decision Friday morning at the Quebec City courthouse. Dressed in a blue jacket and impassive when he entered the room, Pellerin was quickly handcuffed by the special constables at the request of the judge.
“From now on, you are no longer free,” the magistrate told the 25-year-old, who did not react when the sentence was handed down.
Pellerin had admitted his guilt on counts of luring, incitement to sexual touching, having made accessible sexual material as well as production of child pornography.
“Above average” risk of recurrence
To explain his decision, Alain Morand notably raised “the manipulation, premeditation, planning and organization” surrounding the offenses, as well as the number of victims and their age. However, he also took into account the goal of rehabilitating offenders.
“The sentence to be imposed must aim to denounce the illegal behavior of the accused and the harm caused to vulnerable young victims, without entirely overshadowing social reintegration”, he wrote in his decision, adding that it was “imperative” that Pellerin benefits from a therapeutic follow-up because of “deviant sexual interests”.
A sexological report requested on the sidelines of the sentence shows a risk of recidivism “above average” for Thierry Pellerin. The diagnostic hypotheses indicate a possible “primary homosexual pedophilia disorder”, or an interest in young prepubescent boys.
Between the two suggestions
Judge Morand will therefore have cut the pear in two between the suggestions of the public prosecutor and the defence.
The Crown Prosecutor, Ms.e Geneviève Corriveau, demanded a heavy prison sentence of up to 8 years. To support her suggestion, the lawyer had pleaded in particular that the consequences for the young boys who were victims of the gymnast were significant.
Photo archives Martin Alarie
Thierry Pellerin during the World Gymnastics Championships in Montreal in 2017.
“Mistrust, betrayal, disappointment, difficulty in creating bonds of trust. It still has significant repercussions on these young people, ”she explained during the observations on the sentence last December.
For his part, defense lawyer Mathieu Giroux felt that a two-year prison sentence was justified, with a view to rehabilitation for a client who was still young and had begun a therapeutic journey.
“We must not send him to prison and throw away the key,” the lawyer had submitted.
Videos filmed in the toilet
It was parents who sounded the alarm in the summer of 2020 after finding exchanges of sexual messages between their 11 and 12-year-old sons and their coach, Thierry Pellerin. The messages quickly turned to sex and notably addressed the length of children’s penises.
At the time of his arrest, the police seized the young man’s computer equipment and found sexual images of eight young boys, aged 6 to 12.
The videos, filed in a file titled ‘Gym’, contained close-up shots of the young boys’ penises as they urinated in the toilets at the Gymnamic club where they were training.
Pellerin quickly pleaded guilty to all the charges against him.