He’s a ‘gentleman?!’
Ronaldo's 'rape apology'
“Sorry, I’m usually a gentleman,’’ soccer superstar Cristiano Ronaldo told a woman after allegedly raping her in a Las Vegas hotel room in 2009, according to a report.
Ronaldo, who called the rape allegations against him “fake news” Sunday, paid the woman more than $350,000 in 2010 to keep quiet about the incident, Britain’s Sun newspaper said, citing court papers.
The alleged mea culpa from Ronaldo, 33, surfaced Sunday, two days after Kathryn Mayorga filed her suit claiming he raped her.
The incident allegedly happened in Ronaldo’s Palms Casino Resort suite while the two were partying with others.
Ronaldo asked Mayorga, now 34, to join the group in a hot tub, then exposed himself after she went into a bathroom to change and returned, the woman told German magazine Der Spiegel.
He then demanded that she touch his penis, and, when she refused, requested oral sex, she claims. He finally pulled her onto a bed and raped her, according to the lawsuit.
“I turned away. He tried to take take my underwear off. I turned away from him and curled up into a ball. And I was holding my vagina. And that’s when he jumped on me,” she said.
Mayorga said Ronaldo expressed regret when the attack was over.
“When he was finished he still didn’t want to let me go. He looked at me, full of guilt and started calling me ‘baby,’ ” Mayorga said.
“He said sorry, asking if I had pain. Then he went down on his knees and said: ‘ 99 percent of me is a good guy, I just don’t know about the other 1 percent.’ ”
According to the docu- ments, Ronaldo left the bedroom after the alleged assault, stating he was “usually a gentleman.” Pictures obtained by The Sun show the two partying at Rain nightclub in Vegas on the night in question in 2009. Der Spiegel first reported Mayorga’s suit Friday, saying she received the hundreds of thousands of dollars in hush money from Ronaldo in 2010.
But the model-turned-teacher now wants to have a judge toss out the nondisclosure agreement.
Her lawyers filed a suit against him in Nevada’s Clark County District Court on Friday.
“The purpose of this lawsuit is to hold Cristiano Ronaldo responsible within a civil court of law for the injuries he has caused Kathryn Mayorga and the consequences of those injuries,” said her lawyer, Leslie Stovall.
Ronaldo denied the allegations on social media Sunday.
“What they said today: Fake, fake news,” he said in a video posted to Instagram.
“They want to promote by my name. It’s normal. They want to be famous,” he continued.
“It’s part of the job. I’m happy man and all good.”
Ronaldo’s attorney, Christian Schertz, also denied Mayorga’s accusations Friday and threatened to sue Der Spiegel for what he called “an inadmissible reporting of suspi-cions in the area of privacy." Ronaldo, from Portugal, is dating Spanish model Georgina Rodriguez. According to Forbes, he earned $93 million in 2017, $58 million of which came from playing for the Real Madrid team. He now plays for the Italian club Juventus.