The trial against Dani Alves was heard yesterday for sentencing and the footballer's immediate future is now in the hands of the three members of the court. The prosecution maintains the request for nine years in prison by considering it proven that the Brazilian raped the complainant and considering that he acted with violence and absolute contempt towards the victim. Prosecutor Elisabeth Jiménez took advantage of her last intervention to highlight the young woman's strength: “he was very brave.”
Alves testified for just ten minutes to try to convince the court that the relations he had with the young woman were consensual and were not influenced by violence, but by the desire shared by both. The accused tried to minimize risks and only responded to the questions of her lawyer, Inés Guardiola, ensuring that he did not hold the young woman, nor did he slap her, nor humiliate her, nor force her. “Did she tell you that she did not want to have sex with you or did she make any gesture in that sense?” Her lawyer asked. “No, at no time did she say anything to me. “We were both enjoying ourselves there and nothing more.”
It was a brief statement, barely ten minutes long, in which he told a version of the events that fits the second one that he gave at his own request before the investigating judge and that differs from the first. During his presentation, which he stopped several times to burst into tears, he presented himself as an emotionally collapsed man, who has lost everything, sports career, sponsors, contracts. “I found out that I had been reported for rape from an ABC news story. The world came over me".
He explained that on the night of December 30, 2022, he ended up with his friend Bruno at the Sutton after a meal that lasted until dawn and in which he drank more than necessary: two bottles of wine, several glasses of whiskey and a round of gin and tonics. At the trial, the defense introduced the element of alcohol to seek a mitigating circumstance that would allow the sentence to be reduced if he is convicted. He assured that the sexual relations in the bathroom were consensual and denied that the young woman told him at any time that she wanted to leave, or that he prevented her from leaving. “She could snap out of it at any moment,” he clarified as he rejected her slapping her, grabbing her hair and insulting her. “I am not a violent man, I am not that type of man,” he added.
The events began, he said, when his friend Bruno invited the complainant and her companions to table 6 of the booth. “I was close to them, I am a very close person, but always with respect,” he explained in contrast to the “slobbery” attitude that the complainants' friends described. And he described her dancing with the complainant. “He started rubbing her parts against mine, a typical disco dance, twerking. And I and the complainant began to become more intimate.” And at one point, he continued, she started touching her genitals. “There was sexual tension” and she suggested continuing in the bathroom; “She told me that she did.”
The accused reproduced on the chair the position he maintained with the complainant in the bathroom, ensuring that his attitude was passive and that it was the woman who took the initiative.
The session ended with the reports of conclusions. Three forceful and perfectly well-connected and argued interventions by the three professionals, despite the disparity in positions of each one.
The prosecutor maintains the nine-year request, considering that the complainant's story is totally credible. “The victim said that she was terrified in the bathroom and that there was a moment when she let herself go so that everything would end quickly.” The prosecutor spoke as a woman, ensuring that there are many, she too, who have experienced uncomfortable situations and that does not mean they leave, justifying that the three young women remained at Sutton despite everything. “No woman who enters a bathroom thinks that she can be raped,” she concluded, also warning that the victim could have entered freely, even kissed her, but there was a moment in which she said “no” and was not respected. She stressed the changes in the player's version that denote that she felt “unpunished.”
The prosecution's lawyer Ester García maintained the maximum sentence of 12 years, considering it proven that there was a rape. “She doesn't matter to me if she previously twerked or looked for him with her buttocks. If she went into the bathroom and she said no, it's no. That is why consent has been modified with the new law. In the bathroom she repeated 'I want to go.'” And she recalled that it is no longer necessary to prove the victim's resistance to confirm an attack. “We are no longer in that debate. The defendant knew that the young woman did not want to. “It was an act of humiliation,” she rebuked.
During the investigation, Alves paid 150,000 euros as compensation for the damage and, if convicted, the gesture could also be a mitigating circumstance. But the prosecution warned that it was not appropriate to apply such a reduction given the footballer's attitude. And he remembered the first video claiming not to know the girl and the subsequent interview in La Vanguardia claiming that he forgave her.
The lawyer recalled one of the complainant's phrases during her statement at the trial. “She said it herself: 'I was a very happy woman until unfortunately I had to report it.'”
Dani Alves' lawyer closed the session with a long intervention in which she insisted on the innocence of the accused, ensuring that her version of consensual relations had been proven by the evidence seen during the trial. She entertained Inés Guardiola on the footprints located in the bathroom that, she said, coincide with the postures described by Alves.
Much of his intervention was based on searching for what he defined as “contradictions” and “falsehoods” from the complainant about what happened in the bathroom and before entering. Guardiola recalled the remains of Alves' DNA in the complainant's mouth, which would confirm the version of fellatio, denied by the young woman. And he continued remembering moments from the security cameras that, he said, disprove the version of the complainant and her companions about what happened before entering the bathroom. “The camera shows that the placing of the complainant's hand on Mr. Alves's penis is voluntary.” And from here, after other examples, he said that if the victim had not told the truth about what happened outside, his story of what happened inside had no credibility.
In the end, Guardiola warned the court that he had “never” evaluated, criticized, or questioned the victim's attitude, nor her way of dancing, nor her decision to enter or not enter the bathroom. “I have limited myself to describing what he did and what he did was consent to sexual relations, a consent that was never revoked.” To finish by ensuring that "any other person would have interpreted the same thing that Alves did, and that is that the complainant wanted to have sexual relations." “I invite you to be brave. It is not about believing the victim or not, about having an act of faith. But to validate that story with evidence,” he said, addressing the court.
Despite the forcefulness of his final report, Guardiola did not get the evidence of drunkenness that he tried to defend at trial to seek mitigating circumstances in case of conviction. A couple of psychologists appeared who had to prove that the accused was drunk, but the victim's lawyer struck them down with the last question by making them answer that the accused was perfectly aware of what he was doing that night.
Dani Alves resigned from the last word and his lawyer requested his release, which the court will study before passing sentence.
