Der Spiegel magazine claims that the Juventus soccer player settled with alleged victim Kathryn Mayorga, who accused Ronaldo of raping her in June 2009.
- Sep 29, 2018
AceShowbiz - Cristiano Ronaldo is the latest public figure accused of sexual misconduct. German magazine Der Spiegel published an article on Friday, September 28, detailing the alleged victim Kathryn Mayorga's experience of allegedly being raped by the soccer superstar.
Kathryn told the publication that she was raped by the Juventus forward player in June 2009 at a Palms Place hotel room in Las Vegas. She claimed that she vocally said, "no," to his advances, but he ignored his pleas. He reportedly fell to his knees and apologized to her after the sexual intercourse.
According to the magazine, months later Cristiano and Kathryn reached an out-of-court agreement, with the 34-year-old agreeing to never speak of the incident again in return for $375,000. She, however, has now filed a suit in Nevada court and is seeking to have the settlement agreement voided.
Kathryn's lawyer Leslie Mark Stovall told the magazine, "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." Kathryn claimed she has had "serious breakdowns" in the following years after the alleged rape.
However, Cristiano's lawyer Christian Schertz has denied the allegations and threatened to sue Der Spiegel. "[The report] violates the personal rights of our client Cristiano Ronaldo in an exceptionally serious way," Shertz said in a statement to Reuters. "This is an inadmissible reporting of suspicions in the area of privacy. It would therefore already be unlawful to reproduce this reporting."
The statement continued to read, "We have been instructed to immediately assert all existing claims under press law against [Der Spiegel], in particular compensation for moral damages in an amount corresponding to the gravity of the infringement, which is probably one of the most serious violations of personal rights in recent years."
Responding to the statement, the Editor-in-Chief for the German publication insists they repeatedly reached out to Cristiano and his team for comment ahead of publishing the article, but received no response. "We sent written questions, to which there were no answers. Nobody sued us in connection with earlier Ronaldo reports," he told Reuters.
