Ronaldo plays on for Juventus as rape investigation progresses

The lawyers for Cristiano Ronaldo’s accuser are determined to keep the case in the public eye.

Cristiano Ronaldo has been rested by Portugal but continues to play for Juventus amid rape allegations being investigated in Las Vegas. Picture: AFP

It took the mainstream media in Britain a couple of days to pick up the allegation of rape against Cristiano Ronaldo and the 32-page civil case filed against him in Clark County District Court, Nevada, last Thursday. If a certain initial nervousness was understandable, there is no avoiding it now.

Not with lawyers of the accuser, Kathryn Mayorga, making plain their determination not only to push the case but to keep it in the public eye. Yesterday (AEST), Leslie Mark Stovall, Mayorga’s lawyer held a press conference at offices in Las Vegas answering questions about why an incident alleged to have happened in 2009 had resurfaced. The #MeToo movement was cited as one emboldening force.

There was talk of releasing more papers, including the medical records from Mayorga’s sexual assault examination that took place in the University Medical Centre, Las Vegas, in 2009. These are said to show injuries from ­intercourse that, she alleges, was with Ronaldo and was non-consensual.

Stovall suggested a copy of a non-disclosure agreement could be released, with Mayorga insistent she agreed to accept a $US375,000 out-of-court settlement from Ronaldo’s camp to make this go away — which it had, until now.

If we will be saluting Ronaldo as a returning hero when he faces Manchester United at Old Trafford later this month, we probably need at least to be aware that Las Vegas police have been questioning Mayorga and have reopened inquiries. Or are we too busy worrying about comparisons with the footballing abilities of Lionel Messi and who exactly is the greatest player of all time?

Ronaldo denies the charges, doing so initially over the weekend with a slightly odd Instagram Live post, apparently lying on a bed, smiling and dismissing “fake news”. On Thursday, via his Twitter account to almost 75 million followers, came a considerably more robust statement.

“I firmly deny the accusations being issued against me,” Ronaldo tweeted. “Rape is an abominable crime that goes against everything that I am and believe in. Keen as I may be to clear my name, I refuse to feed the media spectacle created by people seeking to promote themselves at my expense.”

Inevitably, millions on social media rushed to judgment depending on what they wanted to believe. Ronaldo is not short of devout fans.

Ronaldo’s lawyers have threatened to sue Der Spiegel over its publication of an extensive interview with Mayorga last week to coincide with filing her lawsuit. In response, the German newspaper points out that the player’s legal team never followed through with a threat of legal action in April 2017 when the newspaper first ran “Cristiano Ronaldo’s secret”.

Claiming to have obtained a dossier via the Football Leaks whistleblowing website, the newspaper raised in print then many of the claims that now appear in Mayorga’s legal submission.

Namely that on June 12, 2009 — the summer when Ronaldo made his move from Manchester United to Real Madrid for about £80 million — she and a female friend met the footballer in a VIP section at the Rain nightclub in Las Vegas.

Invited back to Ronaldo’s suite, apartment No 57306 at the Palms Place Hotel, she says Ronaldo took her to a room to give her spare clothing to wear in the hot tub but then exposed himself and that he “pulled the plaintiff into a bedroom and on to a bed and attempted to engage in sexual intercourse”.

Mayorga says she “covered herself in an attempt to prevent sexual penetration” but that he “turned (the) plaintiff on to her side and while screaming, ‘No, no, no’ she was raped”. She says he ­allowed her to leave the bedroom “stating he was sorry, he was usually a gentleman”.

While she did go to the police, and underwent a medical examination, she says a nurse and officers discouraged her from pressing for a criminal prosecution, and that an inexperienced lawyer guided her, in a traumatised state, to a claim for civil damages.

Ronaldo’s lawyers are said to have hired a team of “fixers” who put Mayorga, her friends and family, under surveillance. It is also ­alleged they had a confidential source inside the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department who said the file would be closed if both parties came to financial agreement.

According to Mayorga — and Der Spiegel, which claims to have obtained all the documentation — in return for $US375,000, or not much more than a week’s income for the footballer at the time, she had to agree to 11 clauses including that she reveal the names of anyone she had discussed the incident with, that she must offer “no response” if ever asked to speak about it and that she must “walk away” if approached in the street, which is what she did when Der Spiegel first contacted her in 2017.

Taking advice from different lawyers, who say Mayorga now “wants justice” as well as damages, she is pressing to have the settlement declared void, claiming she was in a vulnerable state and suffered from post-traumatic stress.

In a piece for Sports Illustrated, University of New Hampshire School of Law associate dean ­Michael McCann writes about the many complexities ahead and says it would be “no small task” to have any settlement overturned. He predicted heavy legal debate over the admissibility of some of the materials, given that Der Spiegel claims to have seen documents in which Ronaldo gave his legal team various statements, including one suggesting that “she said ‘no’ and ‘stop’ several times”.

Then there is the criminal investigation.

“The likelihood of Ronaldo being criminally charged for an incident in 2009 remains low,” McCann wrote, based on the passage of time, though Nevada recently extended its statute of limitations for sexual assault charges from four years to 20.

He does still suggest, however, that Ronaldo may want to stay out of the US until his lawyers are sure he is not about to be charged with an offence. We wait to see the next developments, as do Ronaldo’s various backers including Nike, which issued a statement yesterday saying the company was “deeply concerned by the disturbing allegations” and would closely monitor the situation.

Until then, Ronaldo plays on for Juventus, although he has been rested by Portugal. But it is hard to read the interview with Mayorga in Der Spiegel, and those 32 pages of case number A-18-781869-C filed in Nevada, and not think that it will be some time before Ronaldo’s story will again be only about kicking a ball.

The Times