The woman who accuses Dani Alves testified yesterday in the first session of the trial against the footballer for sexual assault with penetration. The complainant confirmed that the former Barça player raped her in a bathroom in the private room of the Sutton nightclub in Barcelona in the early hours of December 31, 2022. Her testimony was held behind closed doors, without the public and the media being able to listen to it. The recording of the evidence was made with her distorted voice and her pixelated image of her to protect it from possible leaks when that document ends up in the hands of the parties once the trial ends. “She has been very brave to come this far,” said her lawyer, Ester García, as she left the Palace of Justice.
Dani Alves appeared in public for the first time after a year in prison, although months ago images of his voluntary statement before the investigating judge were leaked. Yesterday, the defendant sat in a chair, fiddling with his hands and appearing to be focused. During the first minutes at the beginning of the hearing, the court authorized access to a group of photojournalists to photograph him and record a few moments. Just a few minutes in which he remained unperturbed.
After resolving the previous questions, Alves listened to the complainant's story behind a screen. His mother and one of his brothers approached the Palace of Justice, and although they requested permission from the court to access the courtroom, Alves himself asked them not to do so because he preferred that they remain outside.
After the victim's story, it was the turn of the two young women who accompanied the complainant. Her friend and cousin. From that chair that served as the accused's dock, Alves saw and heard the testimony of the two young women, who explained in first person how they experienced the moments before and after the alleged sexual assault. Both agreed to report a scary situation. During the investigation, the victim told the judge that as the evening progressed with Alves she felt “terror.” Yesterday, his friends explained that they felt uncomfortable but still remained at table 6 of the booth, to which the soccer player and his friend Bruno invited them through a waiter. Her cousin related how the complainant came out of that bathroom strangely and that after her, already heartbroken, she cried and reiterated that she was afraid that no one would believe her. “I had never seen her like that in my life. She kept repeating: 'I'm going home, they're not going to believe me,'” they both agreed.
Of everything the victim told them that night, there was one phrase that stuck out to them and that they both repeated yesterday literally: “He has hurt me a lot, he has hurt me a lot, he came inside.”
The friend recalled that on December 30, 2022, after having dinner at her house and after visiting a cocktail bar, the three of them decided to end the night at Sutton. There, first, they were invited to the VIP area by a couple of Mexicans and then they accepted Alves's invitation to join them at table 6. The friend described that the soccer player had "a slimy attitude and I felt tense" as soon as she greeted him. , and that the accused maintained an attitude towards the complainant that he defined as “obsessive”. And she added that when they showed up to give her two kisses, she put her hand on his back and almost touched his ass. That's why he decided to move away from him and stand on one side of the booth. The cousin explained that the player danced very close and that she even put her hand on his private parts.
The soccer player's lawyer, Inés Guardiola, who has a difficult role after her client has given up to five different versions of what happened, tried to combat the horror story exposed by the complainant and her companions by asking if it was not true that the complainant and her client danced, hugged, rubbed against each other and kissed each other in the moments before going to the bathroom. The friends responded with “I don't remember.”
The defense attempts to weaken the credibility of the victim and her companions by questioning their testimony about the moments before and after the alleged rape to generate doubts in court. Insisting that what they say does not correspond to what appears in the images from the room's security cameras.
One of the witnesses had in mind the moment when her cousin entered the cabin after Alves. And it was precisely she who, upon seeing that the player “was very insistent,” urged her to go talk to him. And precisely for that reason she was not surprised that she went after him and entered that door that she thought was a place to smoke or another booth, but that she never imagined was a bathroom. “He insisted a lot and my cousin didn't know how to do it and I told her to talk to him.”
Inés Guardiola asked her if she was uncomfortable because she didn't leave that booth or why she let her cousin go with the soccer player to the area behind the door. “I have been uncomfortable many times and I didn't think something like this could happen. “I was expecting a place to talk,” she declared.
“In a moment he goes towards some stairs and a little later she goes. And there I lose sight of them. Bruno, the cousin and I stayed there,” declared the other companion.
The complainant's cousin, who had stayed in the booth talking to Bruno, saw that something was wrong as soon as she saw her cousin walk out the door. She “she told me that she needed to leave. We left there. I had never seen her like this in my life. She's hurt me a lot. She has hurt me a lot, she repeated. She has cummed inside.' And at that moment it came out of me to start crying with her. "The three of us started to cry."
The young women went to the cloakroom to look for their jackets when they were intercepted by a Sutton doorman who was interested in the one who was crying. “I saw that she was crying like when your boyfriend leaves you. "It didn't seem like anything serious," the controller said yesterday in court.
Almost thirteen months after those events, the victim continues to suffer the consequences. “She is very bad, she has lost weight, she is anxious. Before she was very fun, she had a circle of friends and now she no longer trusts anyone. Anywhere we go, it is believed that they are watching her, that they are going to record her, she is not calm,” said her cousin, who shares a flat with the young woman. A situation, she assured, that worsened with the dissemination that the player's family made of personal images of the complainant on their social networks. “He doesn't sleep if he doesn't take medication, he doesn't work. We cry day in and day out. And she has started taking antidepressants.”
Guardiola emphasized that the friend is a lawyer and even managed to get her to acknowledge, reluctantly, that when the victim insisted that they would not believe her, she assured him: “As things stand, they will believe you.” . And she asked him directly if she helped prepare a plan to denounce Alves. The three assured that they did not remember it.
