The footballer Dani Alves tried to convince the judge yesterday that what happened in one of the toilets of the Sutton nightclub in Barcelona on the morning of December 31 was no rape, but rather a consensual sexual relationship between two adults who had previously flirted. The ex-Barcelona player appeared on his own initiative before the head of court number 15 who is leading an investigation into a sexual crime for which the Brazilian has been imprisoned for nearly three months. In a statement lasting barely half an hour, in which the defendant answered all parties, Alves admitted for the first time that there was vaginal penetration after fellatio, but that all that happened was consented
The day did not start well for the player. The management of Brians 2 did not receive the court order to release Alves on time and at half past eleven in the morning, with all the protagonists ready in court, the accused was still in the cell of module 13 of the prison .
The statement had to be delayed for two hours and the magistrate went to the grain: "He has requested to testify again. Come in". Earlier there was a tense fight between the judge and Alves' lawyer, Cristóbal Martell, who witnessed "indignantly" how the magistrate intended for the player to be handcuffed inside the courtroom. Finally, the cops guarding the footballer freed him from the handcuffs.
At that moment, Alves began a story of about twenty minutes, without breaks, which he began by assuring that he is a man "respectful of women" and that he only takes the step of proposing a sexual relationship when he is very clear that the someone else wants the same thing.
And this, he assured, is what happened that morning in the reservation of the nightclub on Calle Tusset. Alves explained that he arrived at the Suttón with his friend Bruno Brasil and that they occupied the usual table, the six reserved. That three young men approached and that all five were chatting and dancing animatedly. That he spoke to the complainant, that the context was one of complicity and that he immediately perceived a "sexual tension" between the two parties that translated into a consensual approach. "I suggested to him to continue in a toilet that was right there and he said yes".
Alves assured that everything he was explaining at that moment was recorded by the room's security cameras, which recorded the moment the man entered the toilet, and that two minutes later the woman went there. There are no cameras in that room, but the accused assured that nothing happened in there that the woman did not want to happen and that at no time did she show any opposition to what was happening.
The victim's lawyer, Ester García, asked him that, if things had been so peaceful in this way, why had she reported her client. The defendant explained that he had spent a lot of time in prison thinking about precisely this and that he had come to the conclusion that at the end of the relationship he was not polite enough to the young woman. "Maybe I wasn't paying attention, I asked her to leave the toilet separately and it's possible that she didn't interpret that message well, that she felt offended or upset," he said.
Prosecutor Elisabeth Jiménez questioned him about the injuries the young woman had on her knee. And the man raised the possibility that it was because of the position during fellatio. Martell, for his part, insisted the player specify that "sexual tension" prior to the meeting in the toilet.
In the next few hours, the lawyer will present to court 15 a letter to request Alves' freedom, accompanied by an extensive report that analyzes the images from the security cameras, as reported by La Vanguardia on Monday. A document accompanied by a compilation of the images of the room that have been treated and expanded in the sequences, in which the accused and the complainant interact in the reserved and which, according to the defense, support the version that Alves gave on Monday in court
