About a year ago, the news that a distinguished Taekwondo coach, with gold medals in Europe, was behind bars after complaints from his minor athletes, who, among other things, had complained that the teacher behaved inappropriate towards them, even demanding …massage.

The 47-year-old martial arts teacher, who had won important distinctions inside and outside of Greece and trained several children in Heraklion and Lasithi, is expected to sit on the bench of the Joint Jury Court of Heraklion on Tuesday with the basic charge of abuse in negligence four minors.

He vehemently denies what is attributed to him and this was the line he had followed from the beginning.

In fact, on the day of his apology, he “bent” in the investigator’s office, claiming that everything that is being reported about him is extremely dishonorable and has no basis. At the time he had claimed that the allegations against him were directed by a competitor.

Former athletes, minors and adults at the time of the complaints had claimed in the statements they had given before the pre-investigative authorities that the teacher demanded to be massaged and in case of refusal or discomfort, his behavior was punitive towards them.

“Don’t refuse the teacher because you know it will hurt…”. This is a phrase that the accused coach allegedly regularly used as a form of intimidation or threat to his athletes who did not please him or did not do well in matches, according to testimony.

The 47-year-old is still described as a tough coach who had no qualms about cuffing an athlete or kicking him in the genitals if he got angry.

It is still alleged that he bathed, toweled off and …gave them lessons on “proper genital washing”, showing off his mole.

On the contrary, there were testimonies that claimed that the 47-year-old was a tough coach and pushed the athletes to the limits of their endurance, even wearing hoodies, but in no case had he sexually harassed them.