‘Ronaldo, prove documents false’
Attorneys for a Nevada woman accusing Cristiano Ronaldo of rape yesterday challenged the international football star’s legal team to prove that documents cited in European media reports about their 2009 encounter in Las Vegas are false.
Anything that proves that documents were altered, fabricated or inaccurate also “should be immediately turned over to the appropriate law enforcement agencies”, attorneys Leslie Stovall and Larissa Drohobyczer said in a statement emailed to media.
“Disputes regarding the accuracy of documents are generally questions of fact to be decided by the jury,” they said.
Ronaldo’s attorney, Peter S Christiansen, declined to respond.
On Wednesday, Christiansen issued a statement denying wrongdoing by Ronaldo, branding documents that led to media reports about the rape claim “complete fabrications” and asserting that the encounter in a Las Vegas hotel penthouse bedroom was consensual. The documents became public because they were stolen by a hacker in Europe and put up for sale, he said.
Stovall and Drohobyczer said Christiansen acknowledged that documents upon which the allegations are based “were obtained from Cristiano Ronaldo or individuals acting on his behalf ”.
Drohobyczer declined, via text, to provide additional comment.
The statement was issued in Las Vegas several hours after the German weekly magazine that first published the rape allegation against Ronaldo said in Berlin that it stands by its story.
“We have no reason to believe that those documents are not authentic,”
Der Spiegel spokesman Michael Grabowski said. “We have meticulously fact-checked our information and had it legally reviewed.”
Stovall and Drohobyczer represent Kathryn Mayorga, 34, a former model who filed a civil lawsuit two weeks ago in Nevada seeking money from Ronaldo and a court order to void a non-disclosure agreement the court filing acknowledges she signed when she accepted $375,000 in 2010.
Las Vegas police also reopened a criminal sexual assault investigation at Stovall’s request.
Some of Ronaldo’s corporate sponsors have expressed concern about the rape allegation.