'Life coach' sent to prison in Germany for hostage-taking and rape

A self-appointed "life coach" was sentenced on Monday to 11 years and six months in prison by a court in Germany for hostage-taking and aggravated rape.

The district court in the southern German town of Mosbach found the 38-year-old man had lured young women to his house in the town Walldürn over a period of several years, and abused them there.

The man offered online seminars as a life coach and ran a "boot camp for personal development" in his house, according to the public prosecutor's office.

The criminal offences against seven women and one man took place between 2019 and 2022. The defendant was said to have used coaching services to make contact with the victims and then systematically abused them.

The court heard that he invited the women to his home, where he humiliated them, used severe violence and repeatedly sexually assaulted them.

The judge described "serious injuries" to the victims, including bleeding in the skull, large haematomas and broken teeth.

According to the court, he was not held responsible for some of his most brutal assaults, however, because he was deemed not guilty due to massive drug consumption.

The judgement is not final.

At the start of the trial in February, the co-plaintiffs - including the 38-year-old man's brother and wife - and the public prosecutor's office requested that the public be excluded from the proceedings.

Presiding judge Michael Haas said the life coach had a "contemptuous attitude towards women" and a "manipulative character."

From 2019 onwards, the German used the coaching programmes at his home in Walldürn to deliberately unsettle women. He had agreed with his wife that he could have other women on the side, Haas said.

Several women had moved in with him and they had also "lived together like in a commune." He demanded sex in return for coaching.

The accused had become increasingly violent over time. From 2020, he used drugs, initially marijuana, later also LSD and cocaine.

In October 2022, a victim managed to make an emergency call. The following night, police searched the house and arrested the accused.

He was temporarily placed in a psychiatric facility, but has been in custody since May 2023.

The man's brother was sentenced to three years in prison for aiding and abetting the hostage-taking and for rape.