Former FC Barcelona Brazilian player Dani Alves during the trial. ALBERTO ESTÉVEZ (EFE)
Dani Alves defended his innocence this Wednesday in the trial for the rape of a 23-year-old girl in the Sutton nightclub in Barcelona. In a statement lasting just 20 minutes, in which he simply answered his lawyer's questions, the former FC Barcelona footballer assured that the relationship in the toilets of the VIP area was consensual and that the young woman had never told him I thought she had quit or wanted to leave.
“Did the complainant tell you that she did not want to have sex, did she push him away, did she make any gesture to indicate that she did not give her consent?” asked the lawyer Inés Guardiola.
– No, at no point did he say anything to me. We both enjoyed it there and that was it, nothing more.
Alves' account of what happened in Sutton's tiny bathroom is completely different from the victim's. The young woman claimed in all of her statements that she entered the toilet without knowing where she was going, that Alves forced her to perform fellatio on him (which she resisted), and that he then slapped her and insulted her (“Say that you are my little whore”) and that he penetrated her vaginally with great force and against her will until he ejaculated inside her.
The footballer not only denied these extremes, but also spoke of a consensual sexual relationship in which, according to her, the woman even took the initiative. When the three girls (the victim, a friend and her cousin) went to the VIP area at the waiter's invitation, Alves and the victim began talking and dancing. While the victim claims she felt uncomfortable and that the football player initiated the approach, he claims the opposite. “They didn’t feel uncomfortable at all. The complainant and I started dancing a little closer. We spent a while chatting and having a good time. She started rubbing her parts against mine, a typical disco dance. He started twerking, excuse the word, and we started getting intimate.”
In her statement, the victim claims that Alves held her hand twice and placed it at the level of his penis. He, on the other hand, has explained that it was she who initiated this sexual approach. “He put his hand back and started touching my parts.” “I thought there was a sexual attraction there,” the defendant said, which is why he invited him to have sexual relations in Sutton's suite, a small side room where only the Customers had access from table 6 where they were. Alves and his friend Bruno. According to Alves, who claims to be the defendant and therefore has the right to lie, the girl always agreed to it.
Alves entered the bathroom and waited. “I waited for a while and thought that he wouldn't come anymore, that he didn't want to come. But when I open the door I find her practically there.” He made no gesture for him to come.
Opposite narrative
Alves' account of what happened in the bathroom, where there were no other witnesses or surveillance cameras, is diametrically opposed to that of the victim. “We started kissing, I helped her take off my pants, I sat on the toilet bowl, she knelt in front of me and started giving me blowjob.” After that, the girl straddled him and they had sex, until he took off her clothes when he wanted to ejaculate so as not to do it in her vagina. “I turned around to cum from her pussy and told her I was going back to the cabin. I didn't want them to see us coming out of the bathroom together.” Alves used the chair he testified from as if it were Sutton's toilet and reproduced some of the positions they were in in the bathroom.
The lawyer insisted on consent. According to Alves, she never told him she wanted to leave, nor did he stop her from leaving. “At no time did he say anything to me that he didn't want to.” He also denied hitting her, saying obscenities to her or grabbing her by the hair and head. “Not at all, I'm not a violent man.” When he left the bathroom, he said he spent a while in the VIP area until he decided to leave. In the exit hallway he passed the victim, her friend and the first man, but claimed not to have seen them. At that moment, the girl said that she had been the victim of a sexual assault and a few minutes later identified the perpetrator: Dani Alves.
Alves has been in temporary prison since January 20, 2023. That day he was arrested and brought before the investigating judge, where he gave up to three different versions of what had happened as the evidence became clear to him: first he said that he didn't know the victim, then he knew her, but nothing happened , and finally he performed fellatio on her. Later, in April, he admitted for the first time to penetrating her vaginally (the biological remains suggested this), but said, as he did this Wednesday, that it was consensual sex.
Telephone 016 supports victims of sexist violence – any form of violence, from physical to sexual, psychological or economic violence -, their families and their environment 24 hours a day, every day of the year, in 53 different languages. The number will not be registered on the phone bill, but the call must be deleted from the device. You can also contact them by email at [email protected] and by WhatsApp at number 600 000 016. Minors can contact the ANAR Foundation at 900 20 20 10. If it is an emergency, you can call 112 or the telephone numbers of the National Police (091) and the Civil Guard (062). And if you can't call, you can use the ALERTCOPS application, from which an alarm signal with geolocation will be sent to the police.
Subscribe to continue reading
Read without limits
_