For the fourth time, a court is dealing with allegations of violence against Jérôme Boateng. In the newly reopened trial for physical assault on his ex-girlfriend, the 35-year-old himself takes the floor. Boateng also speaks for the first time about the death of his ex-girlfriend Kasia Lenhardt.
Jérôme Boateng looks a little like a student just before a very important exam when he enters the courtroom of the Munich I Regional Court on Friday. Dark suit, white shirt, he is holding his documents. On them is written what he says he actually didn’t want to say: very personal, sometimes intimate details about his family and love life. “I don’t want to just watch as my reputation and my future are destroyed more and more,” he says.
He has “never before given such a deep insight into my private life,” he says in the statement, which he reads from his documents. “I wanted this and actually don’t want this. All of this is about highly private and intimate things that are nobody else’s business.”
But these things are now being discussed in a courtroom for the umpteenth time. The trial for the alleged assault against the former world-class defender and 2014 football world champion is now in its fourth round. His ex-girlfriend – the mother of his twin daughters – and the public prosecutor accuse him of attacking and injuring the woman during a Caribbean vacation they went on together in 2018.
In 2019, he was sentenced to a fine of 60 daily rates of 30,000 euros each, a total of 1.8 million euros. In the second instance, the Munich I Regional Court then imposed 120 daily rates of 10,000 euros each – a total of 1.2 million euros. But the Bavarian Supreme Regional Court overturned the verdict and the case is now being heard in court for the fourth time.
Boateng had repeatedly and vehemently denied the allegations and said that his ex-partner was lying in order to have a better hand in the custody battle with him. He said the same thing on Friday. “I am a completely normal person, with strengths and weaknesses. And of course I have not always done everything right in my life and in my relationships,” Boateng reads at the beginning of his statement. There was a scuffle that evening, he says. An argument over a game of cards escalated. “It is not me who has lost control of myself and reacted with violence to arguments in our relationship. At most, I get loud and defend myself when I am attacked,” he says.
When his ex-girlfriend hit him with a bloody lip, he pushed her away. She hurt herself in the process. “And of course I’m sorry about that in retrospect. But I apologized for that years ago, several times,” he stresses. “However, what she made of it is completely unfounded and has destroyed almost everything around me, around us,” says Boateng, speaking of a “nightmare that has lasted for years.”
Judge Susanne Hemmerich had previously opened the hearing with a remarkable statement. “I have been doing this job for 40 years now,” she said. And she had never experienced “such extensive media prejudgment of the defendant.” The proceedings have been going on for six years – this is partly due to Corona, but also partly due to judicial failings. And for six years, the two now 13-year-old daughters of Boateng and his ex-girlfriend, who accuses him of violence, have had to “read in the newspaper at regular intervals how their parents are fighting each other in court.”
She suggests a legal discussion. “I think I have a suggestion that all parties can live with.” But it is not accepted. The parties are too far apart from each other. In the end, Hemmerichd even gets loud several times – and stops the trial day in the early afternoon.
Hemmerich repeatedly said on the first of six scheduled trial days that she had never experienced anything like this in her 40 years in the service – even when the prosecutor tried to address the numerous media representatives in the courtroom via the microphone after the end of the hearing. The dispute between Boateng and his former partner is only played out to a small extent in court and to a much greater extent in the (social) media.
For the first time since the death of his ex-girlfriend Kasia Lenhardt, Boateng is talking about her in his statement. “Out of respect for Kasia, and out of respect for her son and her family, I have not spoken publicly since her death,” he says. “But what I no longer accept without objection are all the lies, half-truths and false suspicions that have been woven out of all this and the tragic death of Kasia Lenhardt. For this reason, and especially because of the recent reports in the run-up to this trial, I now felt compelled to speak out.” He also rejects accusations that he became physically violent towards Lenhardt. He emphasizes: “I do not mistreat women and I do not put pressure on my partners. I do not stalk anyone either.”
“I would have liked to have played football at the highest level for a few more years,” says Boateng, the long-time defender of FC Bayern Munich, who just moved from the Italian club US Salernitana to Linzer ASK in Austria. But that was not possible because of the allegations against him. “I also lost all my advertising contracts.” Business partners wanted nothing to do with the “wife beater” he was portrayed as.
His ex-girlfriend’s lawyer does not want to leave it at that and makes a statement after Boateng’s half-hour presentation. It is the same old narrative that is typical of domestic violence, she says: the man who beats his wife claims that she is lying out of vengeance or money or because she wants custody of the children. She reminded everyone that in the first two trials a friend of Boateng’s ex-partner had largely confirmed her version.
This woman has been called as a witness on one of the upcoming trial days, as has one of Boateng’s friends. Both were there that evening in the Caribbean. They will testify again in this trial so that the case can be worked through piece by piece – again.