Gjert Ingebrigtsen, the father of Jakob Ingebrigtsen, was convicted on Monday of one count of assault against his daughter, handed a 15-day suspended sentence but cleared on other abuse charges.
In a trial that dominated headlines in Norwegian media, Gjert faced six years in prison over claims her abused Jakob and his other siblings over a 14-year period, which he denied.
The court believed that Gjert, 59, was guilty of striking his daughter Ingrid in the face with a wet towel during an exchange in 2022, when she was 15, after refusing to let her play with friends.
According to Ingrid, she told her older brothers about the encounter with her father and an image of a red mark on her face was shown during the trial. The incident was seen a turning point for brothers Jakob, Filip and Henrik — who were all coached by Gjert at one point — to publicly denounce their father.
In 2023, they released a joint statement in Norwegian newspaper VG detailing Gjert’s alleged abusive behavior that occurred for years. Their personal accounts in the newspaper also mentioned the wet towel incident involving Ingrid.
But in his testimony, Gjert attempted to clarify what he believed occurred in the interaction.
“Whipping and hitting with a towel are the wrong terms. It’s more of a pull,” he said in April. “I pull the towel towards her finger. And I don’t have a concrete idea whether I hit the finger. It’s a relatively small towel. We stand relatively far apart. The pull I do is done, I think, twice.
Gjert denied ever harming his children when questioned in April during the trial and claimed that he was so against violence that he was discharged from military duty. He later said he did not allow any of his seven children to play with toys that had violent undertones.
“I have never in my life hit another person, ever, and I have definitely never threatened to do so either,” Gjert said in his testimony. “Kicking one of my children is absolutely unthinkable.”
By the time Jakob won gold in the men’s 1,500m, at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, rumblings of issues among the Ingebrigtsens were confirmed when Gjert stepped down as his son’s coach the following year. The allegations against Gjert escalated into charges by Norwegian police following an investigation in 2023.
Gjert first faced charges specifically related to Jakob and Ingrid in April 2024 and by October 2024, additional information appeared to support evidence of abuse of Jakob.
However, Monday’s verdict found that there was “reasonable doubt” in the bulk of the claims in the charges against Gjert in a two month trial that was the talk of Norwegian media — and drew eyes on a family that seemed united in public.
Gjert helped boost the profile of his sons in 2016 after her orchestrated the Team Ingebrigtsen television series which documented his role as a coach of Jakob, Filip and Henrik. The show was a hit for Norwegian network NRK from 2016 to 2021 and Gjert’s concept pushed the family further into the spotlight.
But according to Jakob, the reality of life at home was far from what the cameras captured and by 2018 he moved out just as his success on the track pushed him into stardom.
After the verdict was announced, Gjert’s 15-day suspended sentence included an ordered to pay $1,010 in restitution.
His attorney, John Christian Elden, relayed in a statement that a the weight of the case had an impact on Gjert.
“The decisive factor in the court’s conclusion was that there was no evidence that Gjert Ingebrigtsen created a continuous fear in his children,” the statement read. “The court has particularly emphasized that several close family members and outside witnesses have not seen or experienced abuse.”
“This case has no winners, and today’s verdict shows that all those affected have been exposed to an enormous burden that should have been avoided,” the statement continued.
In contrast, Mette Yvonne Larsen, attorney for Jakob, made it clear that Jakob saw the verdict as an unexpected outcome.
“He was surprised, but he was prepared for it. We talked about this last night, that it was a possible outcome,” Larsen said. “Both the little sister and Jakob are considered to be so credible and that is positive.”
Both sides in the case have 14 days to appeal the ruling.
