The National Police have arrested a soccer coach from Logroño as the alleged perpetrator of five crimes of corruption of minors and another three of sexual abuse for touching a minimum of eight boys between the ages of 15 and 18, to whom he promised sports contracts.
According to Eduardo Esteban, head of the Provincial Judicial Police Brigade, the 38-year-old detainee is an "alleged sexual predator", who is also accused of child pornography and three other crimes of sexual harassment of minors online or child-grooming.
Esteban appeared this Wednesday at a press conference to inform about this operation together with the Government delegate in La Rioja, Beatriz Arraiz, the superior chief of the National Police in La Rioja, Manuel Laguna, and the inspector of the Attention Unit to the Family and Women (UFAM), Zita Cascallana.
The investigation began in June 2022, upon receiving a complaint for sexual abuse of a minor, allegedly committed by his coach. The man was arrested last August and his mobile phone and a tablet were seized, in which there were almost 63,000 multimedia files of a sexual nature with minors.
During the ten months that the investigation has lasted, seven more victims have been identified after the first complaint filed, all of them were adolescents.
The authorities continue to investigate the events committed between 2019 and 2020 and the appearance of more affected minors is not ruled out, since the detainee worked for many years as a sports coach.
As reported by the authorities at the press conference, the defendant used his position as a coach at a sports club in Logroño and a scout for soccer players to establish relationships with young people.
The man took advantage of "the sports desires, the professional sports desires of minors to become someone in the world of soccer" to have private conversations "of a sexual nature" with the boys, outside the scope of training.
Once he gained the trust of the young people, he contacted them through social networks or messaging applications and, then, he asked them for photos of their private parts or appointments to see each other alone, and he even offered money to someone in exchange for having sex.
The agents confirmed that he even groped some of them and also convinced one to move with him to another city under the false pretense of signing a contract with a professional team and there he proposed to go to a hostel to have sex, which the minor declined.
Some of the youngsters agreed to the coach's requirements for the "fear" that if they refused, they would not be able to fulfill their professional expectations in the world of football, he added.
At the time of the coach's arrest, in the Rioja town of Ventas Blancas, where he did not reside, his mobile phone and a tablet were seized, where there were more than 29 gigabytes of multimedia files.
In these documents appeared more minors who have not been able to identify, but the police maintain that, given the fear of "social stigmatization", they may not dare to report the facts.
In this sense, the Government delegate has stressed that this type of serious crime, involving minors, "should never remain silent".
After his arrest in August 2022, this alleged child abuser went to court and was released, with the obligation to appear in court periodically, he has indicated.
