A former secondary school badminton coach has been sentenced to jail for three years for engaging in sex with a 15-year-old student.
The man, now aged 33, was dismissed from his job in June 2019 after the school authorities found him guilty of sending inappropriate texts to other minor students.
As per reports, he would comment on girls’ figures and quiz them about their private lives.
The person pleaded guilty to two out of three counts of sexual penetration of a minor under 16, Mothership reported.
He was handed the sentence on May 23, 2024.
Reports said that the coach and the victim’s interaction began after she joined the school badminton team in 2017. They started following each other on Instagram and eventually started chatting. Soon, the frequency of these chats increased.
As their closeness developed, the man would take the victim out for meals occasionally.
A year later, the coach would hold hands with the victim in public and indulge in physical intimacy, including kissing her when they were alone in his car.
“The accused’s care and attention towards the victim made her feel special. The accused told her that they could only be in an ‘unofficial’ relationship as he was already married and the victim agreed to this arrangement,” Mothership quoted the prosecutor as saying.
After the victim turned 15 in 2019, the man asked her if he could have sex with her, which she refused. However, the man’s persistence led her to agree to the proposal, eventually.
Meanwhile, the school had initiated an investigation by then. Upon questioning several students, the principal found two more victims who received inappropriate messages from the coach. After the completion of the internal investigation, the man was fired from his job.
The sexual encounter with the coach left the victim depressed. In 2022, the victim reached out to her school counsellors for help.
Hesitant at first, the victim lodged a police complaint at the counsellors’ request on July 27, 2022.
The man was arrested the following day. He eventually admitted to committing the offences.
(The article is published under a mutual content partnership arrangement between The Free Press Journal and Connected To India)
