The former coach and former sports director of the Lointek Gernika basketball club, Mario López, will be tried once the investigation is completed. The prosecution requested a 14-year prison sentence against him for a “continuous” offense of sexual assault against one of his players since the age of 13, according to the EiTB. The request from the public prosecutor also proposes a ban on approaching the town where the victim resides for 10 years.
The facts were made public after an article published in ‘El País’ which contained the testimony of the victim who denounced the sexual assaults committed by López. They date back to the summer of 1998, when the victim was 13 years old and studying at the Allende Salazar school. López was her trainer there and, according to the woman, now 39, the abuse lasted three years. The complaint said the victim suffered “countless anal penetrations and fellatio,” in addition to pressure and threats. All these facts were proven during the criminal investigation. The prosecution emphasizes that López “took advantage” of a difficult family situation to find himself alone with the victim and commit increasingly serious crimes.
According to the prosecution, the accused sought and took advantage of moments to be alone with the then minor, taking advantage of the family situation and the absence of parental care and control. Under the pretext of training or perfection in basketball, he invited her to his home, forced her to speak to him daily on the telephone and took advantage of trips and stays to have meetings with him in order to commit sexual assaults .
The Spanish Basketball Federation – López was also coach of the national team – assures that it had only “partial knowledge of this matter based on a complaint against the club received on October 29, 2023” . After what happened, according to the prosecution, the woman was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and required psychological and psychiatric treatment.
Feminist groups from Gernika and the rest of the Basque Country came out to denounce what happened during various mobilizations and demonstrations, while the club announced that it would appear as a private prosecutor in the proceedings opened against López. “We came forward first because the club was the victim of deception. Secondly, because the court understood that we did not need to be subpoenaed as an injured party and, thirdly, because we do not know what happened. To date, we have no complaints, the press has more information than us (…) It is inconceivable that someone informed the members of the club that the person who is there with his girls has a complaint of continuous sexual assault on minors and that these people authorized it. I saw them completely devastated. What do we think failed? The system. Maybe the complainant didn’t want to say it for her own protection and if someone had committed it, she didn’t want it known. This can all be done better. The response from the system, including the club, was insufficient,” argued the lawyer.
