October 4 – Cristiano Ronaldo has issued a firm denial of the sexual assault allegations made against him by Kathryn Mayorga, an American woman, with whom Ronaldo went out in 2009 in Las Vegas.
Last week an investigation by German magazine Der Spiegel revealed rape allegations at the address of Ronaldo. The Portuguese’s camp has vehemently denied any wrongdoing. On Wednesday Ronaldo in a social media post said his conscience was “clear”.
Ronaldo said: “I firmly deny the accusations being issued against me. 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.
“My clear conscious [sic] will thereby allow me to await with tranquillity the results of any and all investigations.”
Mayorga has alleged that Cristiano Ronaldo raped her in a Las Vegas hotel room in 2009. She detailed the events in which the Portuguese forced her to have sex with him in the bathroom of his penthouse suite. She claimed she said no several times, but he ignored her. Mayorga also revealed the protracted legal process by which she subsequently agreed to settle the claims. It was an agreement which, her lawyers claim, was never honoured by Ronaldo and contains documents that prove he knew she had not consented.
Mayorga said she had chosen to go public in the wake of the #MeToo movement – social media hastag that went viral that aims to demonstrate (and with significant and high profile success) the widespread prevalence of sexual assault and harassment, especially in the workplace.
By breaking her end of the agreement, she may now face the possibility of having to pay back $375,000 awarded to her eight years ago, on top of legal fees, in an out-of-court settlement reported by Der Spiegel. She is seeking another $200,000 in damages in a civil lawsuit.
On Tuesday, Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department confirmed that it re-opened the rape investigation into Cristiano Ronaldo. They said: “As of September 2018, the case has been reopened and our detectives are following up on information being provided by the victim.”
Previously, Ronaldo had deemed the claims ‘fake news.’ His lawyer Christian Schertz was less assertive, but threatened to sue the German magazine: “It violates the personal rights of our client Cristiano Ronaldo in an exceptionally serious way.”
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