A French court on Monday, March 18, handed Congolese singer Koffi Olomide a two-year suspended prison sentence for the statutory rape of one of his former dancers when she was 15.
Olomide went on trial after four former dancers claimed he sexually assaulted them several times between 2002 and 2006. The assaults allegedly happened in the Democratic Republic of Congo as well as in France, at a villa outside Paris where the women said they were held against their will.
The dancers said they managed to make a night-time escape from the villa in June 2006, and have not returned to their country since for fear of reprisals.
Prosecutors at his trial in Nanterre, outside Paris, had sought a seven-year prison sentence but the court dismissed the assault and kidnapping charges.
Olomide, 62, was also ordered to pay 5,000 euros ($5,700) in damages to the former dancer, as well as a 5,000-euro fine for helping three of the women enter France illegally.
The singer, whose real name is Antoine Agbepa Mumba, was first charged in 2012 with aggravated rape but the charges were subsequently reduced.
It was not the first time Olomide had been charged with violence. He was briefly jailed in DR Congo in 2016 for kicking one of his dancers, and had already been given a suspended three-month prison sentence in 2012 for striking his producer.
