The Hungarian Swimming Federation confirmed its ongoing support of national team head coach Laszlo Kiss after news broke that Kiss had been charged and jailed in a rape case 55 years ago.
Kiss was charged with rape and served three years in prison in 1961 after he and two other elite swimmers lured a girl into an apartment and gang raped her.
We reported on the revelations yesterday. You can read that report here, or in the excerpt below:
Hungary’s HVG.hu covers the story here, in Hungarian. Kiss, then a 21-year-old athlete, was charged along with two other men in a sexual assault of a woman.
HVG.hu reports that Kiss and the two men, identified as Laszlo L. and Lajos V., lured the girl to an apartment and refused to let her leave until she had had sexual intercourse with one of the men. The HVG.hu story reports that the men held her down and raped her until she no longer resisted.
All three were eventually convicted of rape and served prison sentences: Laszlo L served 3 years, 2 months, Lajos V. 2 years and Kiss 3 years.
The Associated Press reports that the Hungarian Swimming Federation issued a statement Wednesday supporting Kiss as national team head coach. From that AP report:
The federation said Wednesday in a statement that Kiss’s three-year prison sentence was well known within the sport when he began his career and that his achievements and acceptance of responsibility since then allowed for his crime to be forgotten.
The 75-year-old Kiss was 21 when the rape occurred. He has been coaching the women’s national team since 1993 and the men’s national team since 1999 in Hungary.