Cristiano Ronaldo is the most visible athlete on earth. A woman from Las Vegas says: He is the man who raped her in a hotel in 2009. In the current issue of DER SPIEGEL, she goes public with her accusations for the first time.
A woman from the United States has leveled serious accusations against Cristiano Ronaldo. The Portuguese soccer star, says Kathryn Mayorga, 34, raped her in Las Vegas in 2009. Later, Ronaldo paid her $375,000 so that she would never again speak about that night. Her lawyer, the German news magazine DER SPIEGEL reports in its latest issue, is now questioning the validity of that out-of-court settlement in a civil complaint in Nevada.
In DER SPIEGEL, Mayorga has now spoken publicly for the first time about her encounter with Ronaldo nine years ago and tells her version of what took place in his hotel suite.
Ronaldo, Mayorga claims, raped her anally. Afterwards, she says he asked her if she was in pain. “By this time, he’s (…) on his knees. He says the 99 percent thing.” He insisted, Mayorga says, that he was a “good guy” except for the “one percent.”
Ronaldo denies the accusations, the sex was consensual, according to him. Mayorga’s lawyer’s claim relies in part on a document, which includes Ronaldo’s description of what happened that night. In that document, the soccer player is quoted as saying: “She said no and stop several times.”
DER SPIEGEL first reported on the rape accusations one-and-a-half years ago. That story was based on documents made available to the newsmagazine by the whistleblower platform Football Leaks.
