GettyA former aspiring model has publicly accused Cristiano Ronaldo of raping her in 2009, and revealed details of a deal reportedly meant to keep the allegations private.
Kathryn Mayorga has come forward to allege Cristiano Ronaldo, the Juventus forward, violently sexually assaulted her in a bathroom at the Palms Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas in the early hours of June 13, 2009.
Now 34, the teacher has filed court documents accusing him of raping her in the Las Vegas hotel room in 2009.
GettyMayorga was an aspiring model when she met Ronaldo at the Rain nightclub at the Palms. He was staying there on holiday. Photographs show Ronaldo and Mayorga together at the club.
According to documents filed at Clark County District Court on Friday 28 September 2018, the footballer invited Mayorga and a friend to the penthouse suite in which he was staying ‘to enjoy the view of the Las Vegas Strip’. They agreed.
While in the penthouse, Mayorga told Der Spiegel, she refused to get into his hot tub for the sake of not ruining her dress, upon which time Ronaldo, then 24, offered her shorts and a T-shirt and showed Mayorga a bathroom where she could change.
The court documents outline Mayorga’s account, which alleges as she was changing, Ronaldo entered the bathroom, exposed himself and asked her to perform a sex act.
GettyThe documents continue:
The plaintiff [Ms Mayorga] refused and stated she wanted to leave the hotel suite. Upon leaving the bathroom, Ronaldo pulled the plaintiff into a bedroom and on to a bed and attempted to engage in sexual intercourse.
Plaintiff refused… and covered herself in an attempt to prevent sexual penetration.
Then, the accused is said to have turned Mayorga, who claimed to have been screaming ‘No, no, no!’, onto her side, at which point Ronaldo allegedly raped her.
The documents show Ronaldo agreed they had sex, but in his account, it was consensual.
GettyMayorga claims the alleged rape was reported to Las Vegas police later the same day and she is said to have gone to hospital where potential evidence was documented and photographed.
Ronaldo, now 33, claimed Mayorga’s injuries were not caused by him, but by another unidentified person.
Mayorga’s lawyer later negotiated a £287,000 settlement, agreed in 2010, which obliged Mayorga to keep her allegations out of public domain.
But her new claim seeks to overturn the 2010 agreement, which she says she signed because she was ‘terrified of retaliation’ and scared of ‘being publicly humiliated by being identified as a victim of sexual assault’.
GettyMayorga said she has been traumatised since the incident and has gone public with her story because of the #MeToo movement which is uncovering incidents of systematic sexual abuse the world over.
The Juventus player has now responded to the allegations on Instagram.
The Portuguese international dismissed the allegations, saying:
No, no, no, no, no. What they said today? Fake, fake news.
They want to promote [themselves by using] my name. It’s normal. They want to be famous to say my name, but it is part of the job. I am a happy man and all good.
Der Spiegel reports Ronaldo will likely have to revisit the case, as the Nevada criminal code states when a sexual assault has been documented in time by the police, it will never fall under the statute of limitations.
Mayorga is suing for damages but, conversely, Ronaldo’s lawyers vowed to sue Der Spiegel, saying the ‘blatantly illegal’ story ‘violates the personal rights of our client in an exceptionally serious way’.
In the last several weeks, the authorities have spoken with Mayorga on several occasions and questioned her again.
A former emo kid who talks too much about 8Chan meme culture, the Kardashian Klan, and how her smartphone is probably killing her. Francesca is a Cardiff University Journalism Masters grad who has done words for BBC, ELLE, The Debrief, DAZED, an art magazine you’ve never heard of and a feminist zine which never went to print.