Ronaldo’s lawyers and a ‘malicious and coercive bid to silence rape accuser’
CRISTIANO Ronaldo’s legal team used ‘malicious and coercive’ tactics to silence a woman who accused him of rape – and bragged how effective they were, documents allege.
A lawsuit claims that Ronaldo’s advisers used ‘reputation protection specialists’ to put Kathryn Mayorga under surveillance and report back to the soccer star.
The Juventus and Portugal star’s advisers also allegedly threatened to falsely claim she had consensual sex with him and was accusing him of rape to make money.
When she agreed to accept £270,000 (€304,101) hush money, Ronaldo’s team wrote: ‘We have fully succeeded. We anticipate being able to wrap this up and close this matter in short order.’
They explained they had avoided the ‘devastating impact on his endorsement opportunities’ and had protected his ‘personal and professional reputation’.
Ms Mayorga, 34, alleges Ronaldo raped her in a Las Vegas hotel in June 2009 after she met him at a nightclub when she was an aspiring model. She is speaking out and has given a dossier of evidence to the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police, claiming her confidentiality agreement is invalid.
Last week, her lawyers filed a civil lawsuit in Las Vegas that accuses Ronaldo of being part of a ‘conspiracy’ to obstruct the criminal case against him.
The lawsuit accuses Ronaldo and his legal team of 11 counts including coercion, fraud, abuse of a vulnerable person and racketeering, a charge often associated with the mafia. The racketeering charges relate to the work by Ronaldo and his team to ‘obstruct the criminal investigation’ against him, it is alleged.
The lawsuit claims that after the alleged rape, Ronaldo, 33, hired a team to investigate Ms Mayorga, her family and her friends.
His team allegedly pressured Ms Mayorga, who recently quit her job as an elementary school teacher, not to contact police and reach the settlement.
As the negotiations continued, Ronaldo was allegedly given a portrait of Ms Mayorga as a ‘vulnerable person’ experiencing ‘severe psychological injury’ as a result of the claimed rape. Ronaldo was allegedly informed that she was having therapy, abusing alcohol as she tried to cope, was unemployed and had contemplated suicide.
The lawsuit includes what appears to be an internal message from Ronaldo’s team boasting they had negotiated an ‘incredibly favourable settlement’ equivalent to a week’s wages with Real Madrid, his club at the time.
The message says Ronaldo ‘could have been jailed for life’ and could have suffered the ‘catastrophic effect’ of not being able to play in the US.
But buying Ms Mayorga’s silence had averted ‘the devastating impact such claims would have had on his personal and professional reputation, endorsement and professional opportunities’.
The message also boasted about the ‘invaluable work’ Ronaldo’s team had done and how they had ‘fully succeeded in their mission’.
Ronaldo’s girlfriend, Georgina Rodriguez, has backed him on Instagram.
In a statement released by her lawyers yesterday Ms Mayorga said she was speaking out to ‘publicise how fixers cover up and enable sexual assaults by the wealthy and the famous’. The allegations were published by German magazine Der Spiegel, which claimed that in messages to his lawyers Ronaldo admitted Ms Mayorga told him to stop but he continued to engage in sex acts.
Ronaldo’s lawyers have said that the claims are ‘inadmissible reporting of suspicions in the area of privacy’. Nobody from the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police was available for comment.