Drew Drechsel, a former American Ninja Warrior champion whom a federal judge described as a “dangerous predator” was sentenced to just over 10 years in prison on Wednesday after pleading guilty to manufacturing child pornography and enticing an underage South Jersey girl to travel for sex.
According to prosecutors, Drechsel met the victim in 2014 after an American Ninja Warrior contestant event, where they exchanged numbers and began texting each other. She was 14 at the time.
In July 2015, the teen and Drechsel, then 26, texted about her visiting the New Era Ninja Gym in Hamden, Conn., which Drechsel owned, as a 15th birthday present.
During her visit, prosecutors said, the two had sex after Drechsel’s girlfriend left the gym. The next day, the teen told her mother about the encounter. When her mother confronted Drechsel, he did not deny having sex with the girl, but said he had not known her age.
But Drechsel continued to see her, meeting her multiple times for sex over the next two years. A forensic analysis of Drechsel’s cell phone also revealed several images and a video of the girl when she was 14 to 16 years old.
“To this day I still cannot get out of my head how he took advantage of me while I was a child, and the wave of PTSD those thoughts provoke,” the woman, now in her mid-20s, said in court Wednesday at Drechsel’s sentencing. “Drew is dangerous. …it takes a predator to open gyms for children around the country, and then prey on the girls who go into those gyms.”
Prosecutors in U.S. District Court in Camden also presented testimony from another woman who recounted how Drechsel groomed her when she was 16 and a student at one of his gyms, then continued a relationship with her for six months before ending it to date her best friend, who was also underage.
The woman told the judge that shortly after she and Drechsel broke up, he raped her at a party at his house while she was drunk, and urged U.S. District Judge Renée Bumb to impose the longest possible sentence. The woman said she reported the crime to police several years later, but no charges were filed in connection with that or the other behavior she described in court.
Both women said Drechsel used his celebrity to groom them and lure them into sexual relationships. They said the grooming and abuse still haunted them and left them struggling to trust themselves and their loved ones, more than a decade later.
Drechsel, who pleaded guilty last June, apologized to the woman he admitted having sex with when she was a teen, and said he had loved her at the time. He also described his efforts over the last four years to help others while incarcerated, tutoring other inmates for the GED, and serving on the prison’s suicide watch team.
“A simple ‘I’m sorry’ doesn’t cut it,” Drechsel said. “Nothing in the English language can describe the regret, shame and embarrassment I feel in my soul.”
The judge, however, challenged him for what she saw as a lack of consideration for the consequences of his actions
“You thought you were such a celebrity, such a big shot that you could take advantage of people, of children,” Bumb told Drechsel. “Is that what superheroes do?”
“No ma’m,” he replied.
Ultimately, Bumb sided with prosecutors when she imposed the 121-month sentence. Drechsel’s attorney had sought a 96-month prison term, arguing that Dreschel’s efforts to improve himself since his arrest merited a lighter sentence. The judge also ordered Dreschel to register as a sex offender and pay the woman $100,000 in restitution.
___
(c) 2024 The Philadelphia Inquirer
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
