Ronaldo accuser to persevere, attorney says

After international soccer player Cristiano Ronaldo denied a woman’s rape accusations against him in a tweet Wednesday, her attorney said she was “determined to follow through” with a lawsuit.

Kathryn Mayorga is the plaintiff in a lawsuit filed Sept. 27 against Ronaldo. It alleges that after the rape on June 13, 2009, at Ronaldo’s penthouse suite at the Palms, his “team of fixers” tried to “obstruct the criminal investigation and prosecution” of the soccer star.

“She made the decision to do this; she was determined to follow through on this,” Mayorga’s attorney, Leslie Stovall, said during a Wednesday news conference.

Mayorga didn’t attend the news conference for mental health reasons, her lawyers said. The lawsuit said Mayorga was diagnosed with major depression and post-traumatic stress disorder caused by the assault.

Ronaldo, 33, tweeted that he “(refused) to feed the media spectacle created by people seeking to promote themselves at my expense.”

The complaint said that Mayorga repeatedly said no to Ronaldo during the attack.

German magazine Der Spiegel uncovered documents last year revealing a 2010 out-of-court settlement between Ronaldo and Mayorga.

The current lawsuit said that the previous mediation happened in Las Vegas after Ronaldo hired a team of “fixers” who threatened to falsely and publicly claim that Mayorga accused Ronaldo “to obtain money” from him.

Stovall said Mayorga received $375,000 from the settlement.

Stovall said a court could decide the agreement was void if Mayorga’s emotional state made her unable to “participate reasonably in that negotiation.”

Mayorga wanted to publicly come forward after documents about Ronaldo’s legal team were unveiled, Stovall said.

“The Me Too movement and the women who have stood up and disclosed sexual assault publicly have given Kathryn a lot of courage,” he said.

Mayorga filed a report with the Metropolitan Police Department and went to University Medical Center for an examination the same day of the alleged assault, the complaint said. An officer interviewed her “within weeks” of her report.

Police did not contact Mayorga after that interview, but she has since talked with Metro after her attorneys gave police documentation about the settlement in August, Stovall said.

Metro spokesman Jay Rivera said the 2009 case was reopened in September.

Stovall said the lawsuit process could take months.

“If I were really to tell you what I think she would want, she would want to not have been the person that this occurred to on June 13th, 2009,” Stovall said.