UPDATE 10/3/18 4:00 p.m. ET
Cristiano Ronaldo denied the allegations against him in a series of tweets on Wednesday, October 3.
“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,” he wrote. “My clear conscious will thereby allow me to await with tranquillity the results of any and all investigations.”
Original story below:
A Las Vegas woman accused Cristiano Ronaldo of rape in a lawsuit filed in Clark County, Nevada, on Friday, September 28, CNN reports.
The civil complaint obtained by the outlet alleges that the Portuguese soccer star, 33, sexually assaulted Kathryn Mayorga in his penthouse suite at the Palms Casino Resort in Las Vegas in June 2009. She claims she was changing her clothes in a bathroom when he approached her, exposed himself and asked her for oral sex. Mayorga says she refused, but he allegedly pulled her into a bedroom and raped her as she repeatedly screamed no.
CNN reports that Mayorga reported the alleged incident to police later that day and also went to a local hospital for a sexual assault examination. The lawsuit reportedly states that she initially refused to identify Ronaldo to police in fear of public humiliation, but named him weeks later during an interview with officials.
Mayorga further claims in the filing obtained by the outlet that the athlete retained a team of so-called “personal reputation protection specialists” who monitored her, her family and her friends as well as police in an attempt to prevent or delay the allegations from being made public. That team allegedly threatened to publicly portray her as a woman who consented to sexual intercourse only to later attempt to extort money from Ronaldo with a false claim.
CNN reports that Mayorga negotiated a $375,000 settlement with the team, who also had her sign a nondisclosure agreement.
The news comes one week after the German magazine Der Spiegel published a report about Mayorga’s allegations before she filed her lawsuit. Ronaldo’s rep called the story “journalistic fiction” at the time and said the claims were “untruthful and false.”
Ronaldo also denied the accusations during an Instagram Live session on Friday. He said, “Fake news. They want to promote my name. It’s normal. They want to be famous to say my name, but it is part of the job. I am happy, man, and all good.”
The sportsman is the father of 10-month-old daughter Alana with girlfriend Georgina Rodríguez, in addition to three children who were born via surrogates: Cristiano Jr., 8, and twins Eva and Mateo, 15 months.
Us Weekly has reached out to attorneys for Ronaldo and Mayorga for comment.
