Two-time Paralympic wheelchair tennis champion Nicolas Peifer was given a suspended six-month jail sentence by a courtroom in France on Monday for sexually harassing a minor aged below 15 years.
Judges adopted prosecutors’ suggestions and reclassified the preliminary cost of “sexual proposition made to a minor under 15 by electronic means” to “sexual harassment” after a courtroom listening to within the tennis participant’s hometown of Sarreguemines in north-eastern France.
“I’m flabbergasted by this decision. We are going to appeal,” Peifer’s lawyer, Martial Gagneux, informed AFP.
“I don’t see where there was harassment, except to consider that the fact of sending messages to someone, and not sending them again when you are asked, constitutes harassment.
“For me, this is a serious distortion of the law.”
During the trial in October, Gagneux denied the existence of a legal offence, whereas acknowledging that his consumer had exchanged messages with the sufferer between 2016 and 2018.
Frenchman Peifer, 32, received tennis doubles on the Paralympic Games in Rio in 2016, and once more in Tokyo 2020 with associate Stephane Houdet.