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A Norway court has acquitted Gjert Ingebrigtsen of abusing his son, Olympic champion runner Jakob Ingebrigtsen, but convicted him and handed him a 15-day suspended sentence for assaulting his daughter on one occasion. 

Gjert Ingebrigtsen, 59, acted as trainer until 2022 to Jakob, 24, who won Olympic gold in the 5000m in Paris in 2024 and the 1500m in Tokyo in 2021. 

He was accused of physical and psychological violence against Jakob and his sister Ingrid, 19, between 2008 and 2022, but denied the charges. 

At the conclusion of the lengthy trial that lasted from March 24 to May 15 at the Sandnes court, he was acquitted of the abuse alleged by Jakob. 

The court however found him guilty of one violent incident involving his daughter Ingrid. 

In her testimony, Ingrid told the court her father hit her in the face with a wet towel in January 2022 – a picture taken that day showed her with a red cheek. 

He said he was aiming for her finger, which she was pointing at him during a row. 

In addition to a 15-day suspended prison sentence, Ingebrigtsen snr was ordered to pay Ingrid 10,000 kroner (NZ$2557) in damages. 

Prosecutors had called for him to be jailed for two and a half years. 

“They didn’t say they were disappointed. They said they were surprised,” Mette Yvonne Larsen, Jakob’s and Ingrid’s lawyer, told reporters when describing her clients’ reactions to the verdict. 

Meanwhile, the accused’s lawyers noted that “what was decisive for the court’s conclusion was the lack of evidence proving that Gjert Ingebrigtsen had instilled constant fear in his children”. 

“The court specifically highlighted that several close family members as well as external witnesses had neither observed nor witnessed mistreatment,” they said in a statement. 

The parties have 14 days to appeal the verdict. 

Throughout the trial, Jakob referred to his father as “the accused” and told the court he stopped calling him “dad” at the age of 11 or 12. 

“My upbringing was very much characterised by fear,” he told the court. 

“I felt like I had no free choice and I wasn’t allowed to speak my mind. Everything was controlled and decided for me. An enormous amount of manipulation,” he said. 

He recounted several episodes of physical violence, including slaps and kicks to the stomach, some of which occurred when he was 7 years old. 

Ingebrigtsen snr has called the trial a “textbook case of character assassination”. 

He told the court he had been an “overly protective” father who had given his seven children a “traditional and patriarchal” upbringing. 

He was keen to contribute to their success but received only ingratitude in return, he said. 

Jakob and two of his brothers, Henrik and Filip, who are also athletes, shocked Norway in October 2023 when they used a newspaper article to accuse their father of using physical violence during their upbringing. 

The police investigated claims about all seven Ingebrigtsen siblings but retained only those relating to Jakob and Ingrid. 

Jakob – who claimed the 1500m and 3000m world indoor titles right before the opening of the trial in March – with Henrik and Filip cut ties with their father in 2022. 

On the final day of the trial, Jakob told the court the proceedings had “profound and heartbreaking consequences” for the siblings regardless of the verdict. 

“We have known that from the beginning, but it was nonetheless important to tell our story,” he said. 

-AFP