Former Olympic champion swimmer Yannick Agnel was indicted for “rape and sexual assault on a 15-year-old“and placed under judicial control, the Mulhouse (Haut-Rhin) prosecutor’s office announced to AFP on Saturday. the judge of freedoms and detention, said the prosecutor of the Republic of Mulhouse, Edwige Roux-Morizot.
The 29-year-old former athlete, converted into e-sport and consultant in various media, left the Mulhouse court around 7:50 p.m., accompanied by some relatives, without making any statements. The JDD specifies in its edition of this Sunday, December 12 that Yannick Agnel “acknowledged some form of closeness to the complainant but denied any notion of a sexual act”.
The prosecutor of the Republic of Mulhouse had specified Thursday to AFP that a complaint had been lodged last summer for facts going up “around 2016“. According to L’Equipe,”the investigation would follow a complaint from a swimmer who trained with Agnel in Mulhouse between 2014 and 2016“.”Several swimmers or former swimmers have been auditioned in recent weeks“, added the sports daily.
This weekend, we also learned that the Minister of Sports Roxana Maracineanu, herself passed through the Mulhouse club when she was a swimmer, personally knew the alleged victim. The minister told AFP: “It is an instruction which follows its course and must follow its course, the complaint of the young girl is in the hands of justice and she must go to the end (…) It is a very important subject for me at the level national, it is a fight that we carry at the European and international level (…) that the word can be freed (…) it is essential so that other children do not have to undergo this anymore ( …) I personally know the person who lodged the complaint, you can imagine that this particularly affects me“.
Double Olympic champion in 2012, Yannick Agnel then tried an experience in the United States, before returning to France and obtaining a license at Mulhouse Olympic Swimming (MON) in September 2014. He trained there for two years under the leadership of Lionel Horter, until the Olympics-2016.
Yannick Agnel remains presumed innocent of the facts with which he is accused.