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Rabat – A new pedophilia scandal has erupted in an aerobics gym in Rabat, where a 59-year-old coach was caught on CCTV cameras sexually harassing underage students.
According to a Moroccan news outlet, the suspect, who is also the owner of the gym, took advantage of the karate and aerobics sessions that he offered to minors to lure them through aggressive gestures.
The father of one of the victims filled a complaint of sexual assault against the coach for his alleged involvement in the case. Six other minors who were interviewed by the Moroccan police in Rabat confirmed to the police that they had been sexually harassed by their coach who went as far as touching their private parts.
The pedophile suddenly left Rabat for his native village near Marrakech after the lawsuit was filed against him. However, he decided to surrender voluntarily when the court had issued a warrant to search his house.
The victim who filed the lawsuit, said that the suspect would sometimes summon her away, requesting that she bring him water to an isolated floor within the same gym. Upon her return to the initial gym floor, her colleagues noticed that she was crying.
The suspect, however, said that his actions are not reprehensible, because, according to him, the gestures fall within the framework of the training he provides to his students.
Employees working for the association that the suspect’s gym belongs to, said they had never noticed the coach’s criminal behavior.
Meanwhile, the police reportedly viewed several surveillance cameras as well as “DVR” recordings and concluded that “the karate and aerobics coach was indeed guilty of obscene gestures against his students.”
This is not the first time a pedophilia incident occurred in Rabat. An Australian-Hungarian man was arrested in August 2019 while trying to take photos of minors at Rabat’s beach.
Another incident that created a national uproar is the one of 11-year-old Adnane Bouchouf who was kidnapped, raped, and killed in September 2020.
During the same year, a 50-year-old man was sentenced to 20 years in prison for raping 20 underaged girls in Lissasfa, a region in Casablanca.
An independent commission has recently revealed in a report that over 3,000 French clergymen working in the French Catholic Church since the 1950s were pedophiles and have sexually abused more than 200,000 children in the past 70 years.
Article 485 of Morocco’s Criminal Code stipulates that sexual abuse of children and minors are punishable with a prison sentence ranging 12 to 20 years.
