Also looming at the time was an allegation of rape dating back to 2009 in Las Vegas that had surfaced in a massive trove of football-related documents posted by the whistleblower platform Football Leaks and obtained by the German magazine Der Spiegel, which reported on the allegations against Ronaldo in April 2017. Also in the cache, per a 2019 New Yorker report, was a settlement agreement from 2010 and a side letter identifying the alleged perpetrator, referred to in the settlement as “Mr. D,” as Ronaldo.
The case was closed in 2009 but reopened in Vegas when the alleged victim, Kathryn Mayorga, went public in 2018, inspired to come forward, she said, by the #MeToo movement. She said she was assaulted and pressured by people in Ronaldo’s camp to accept $375,000 in hush money.
Ronaldo denied all of it, calling the allegations “fake news” in a social media post that September.
“Of course, this story is interfering in my life,” he told France Football. “I have a partner, four children, an aging mother, sisters, a brother, a family with whom I am very close. Not to mention my reputation, which is that of someone exemplary…Imagine what it means when someone accuses you of rape, whether you have all that or not. I know who I am and what I did. Truth will out one day. And the people who criticize me or seek to expose my life today, who make it into a circus, these people will see.”
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