At the beginning of the hearing, judge Andreas Forstner carefully asks again: He wants to know whether Jérôme Boateng might have slept and thought about his proposal again. “Just sleeping,” says his attorney. An agreement is also out of the question for Boateng on the second day of his trial for assault.
And so the district court of Munich I on Friday gets into the details of that Caribbean night in July 2018, about which there are two versions – at least. In one of these versions, the 2014 soccer world champion insulted, hit and injured his then-girlfriend and mother of his twin girls. For this version, Boateng was sentenced to a fine of 1.8 million euros by the district court in the first instance. In a second version, he only yelled at his girlfriend at the time.
“Come on, Jérôme is beating Sandra (name changed)”, the ex-partner’s friend, who accompanied the family to the Caribbean, claims to have said. “Come on, the two are arguing,” Boateng’s friend, whom he brought with him on vacation, claims to have heard.
He didn’t notice anything about his buddy attacking his girlfriend and he’s known him for so long that he can say that such behavior doesn’t suit him: “I can’t imagine him doing something like that.” He only noticed that Boateng bumped into a table “with his long knuckles” after a card game and broke a lantern and that he later argued violently with his girlfriend and the two yelled at each other.
In the version reported by the witness, the lantern broke because Boateng stepped in the direction of her friend. She tells of “several punches” with which the 34-year-old is said to have abused the mother of his children, of severe insults and of the fact that she helped the woman. “She was completely dissolved, cried, trembled all over.” She then gave her painkillers and helped her cool the eye.
The description, which is interrupted by gaps in memory, corresponds in part to that which Boateng’s ex-girlfriend also described in court.
The woman is visibly nervous and agitated that day and reports on an incident in front of the courthouse: Men who later turned out to be employees of a security service hired by Boateng filmed them entering. This made her feel threatened. “You’re just afraid,” she said – “that you’ll be threatened or your family will be threatened”.
The public prosecutor requested that the personal details be determined on the grounds that a criminal offense or the preparation of a criminal offense could have occurred. Sergeants then determined the personal details.
After determining the personal details, Boateng’s lawyers emphasized that a “security service, which also looked after Mr Boateng yesterday”, only “determined the environment” in order to be able to assess “Boateng’s security situation”. It was a matter of pure “object clarification” and the witness was not specifically filmed and was only filmed from behind.
Boateng’s longtime friend, of whom both the alleged victim and her girlfriend say he was not present at the lantern incident because he was asleep, largely tells the same version that the soccer star himself did in his first trial presented at the district court about a year ago.
The interrogation of the two vacation escorts drags on on the second day of the trial. So much so that by lunchtime at the latest, the court has had to give up its hopes of completing the proceedings in two days.
But there is something else that makes Judge Forstner hopeful on this day. Sometimes there is agreement in the testimonies, he says. All witnesses described the height of the lantern in the same way.
Editor’s Note: This article has been updated since it was first published.
