When on January 20, 2023 the former footballer Daniele Alves – tried for rape – showed up at a police station in Barcelona, underestimated the reason for his summons. They told him that a young woman had accused him of groping her in a nightclub, but he had already sent a video to a TV saying: “I don’t know who that lady is, I don’t know her”.
From that statement – from Mexico, where he played for the Pumas club, and while he was still free -, Alves has not stopped contradicting himself.
He did so in person or through various writings presented by his defense lawyers on duty.
He has been in pre-trial detention for more than a year and, from January 2023 to today, he already had three lawyers.
What really happened that early morning on December 31, 2022 in the VIP bathroom of the Sutton nightclub in Barcelona?
According to the young woman who reported the former footballer, she entered without knowing that it was a bathroom. Alves locked the door, groped her, beat her, insulted her and finally sexually assaulted her..
The girl, now 24, said on Monday during the first day of the trial that she could have sentenced the former Barca player to a sentence of 9 to 12 years in prison. His testimony is still that of the first day. He never contradicted himself.
Alves, for his part, was “editing” his version of that night.
He began with “I have never seen her in my life”, so he said in the first days of January last year.
According to the nightclub manager, who testified in court on Monday, when he found the girl, “she was crying and thought maybe it was a misunderstanding with her boyfriend. Mr. Alves couldn’t wait. “Alves went to five or two feet.”
In a second attempt to tone down the scandal, the former Brazilian footballer claimed that their paths had crossed in the club’s bathroom. Without even touching him, he made it clear.
But Sutton’s security cameras, while not recording all the movements in the cabin, denied they had not been together. It also emerged that genetic samples had been collected in the bathroom and on the young woman’s clothes. And that the girl’s fingerprints were tattooed on the bathroom mirror and in the sink, which would confirm the young woman’s version when she said this The former footballer forced her to look in the mirror before lifting her dress and raping her.
In the case there would be a complaint from the Hospital Clínic of Barcelona which treated the young woman after the sexual violence she reported.
That was it then Alves’ defense She chose to have him say something similar to the fact that, in reality, the girl had jumped on him and performed oral sex on him.
“She came out crying and told me that I had hurt her a lot,” the young woman’s friend said on Monday in courtroom 21 of the Barcelona Court, where the trial against Alves is taking place.
The latest version of the accused admits to having had sexual intercourse with the complainant. According to Alves there was nothing forced. He was consensual. But he, he assured, He lied and avoided confessing so as not to hurt his wife., the Canarian model Joana Sanz. “I had an obsession: to protect my marriage, to protect the woman I love,” Alves said.
This Tuesday, the second day of the trial, the model will testify among the 22 witnesses who will appear before the Barcelona court. María Lucía Alves, mother of the former player, will also testify.
The complaint
The then 23-year-old girl who reported him took a couple of days to make the decision. “You won’t believe me,” the girl told her friend and cousin, who had been with her at the Sutton nightclub.
He finally made it on January 2, 2023. That day, Alves flew from Spain to Mexico to meet his team, the Pumas, and resume training.
But ten days later, The death of his mother-in-law brought him back to Spain. It was there that the Mossos d’Esquadra, the Catalan police, summoned him to give a statement.
They wanted to prevent the complaint from leaking while the then Pumas player was outside of Spain since, if he had taken refuge in his country, Brazil, it would have been impossible to extradite him. Brazil does not hand over its citizens to other countries, even if they are accused of committing crimes abroad.
“Only you and I know what happened.”
In June last year, after five months of preventive detention, Dani Alves gave a single interview to the Catalan newspaper La Vanguardia.
“I forgive her”Alves said in that speech of the complainant.
“I still don’t know why she did all this, but I forgive her,” he added.
There he told how he left Sutton in the early hours of December 31, 2022: “When I left the nightclub I knew I had passed by the woman who was already crying. I did not see her. “If I had seen her cry I would have stopped and asked,” she said.
“And if at that moment the manager of the nightclub had asked me to wait because a young woman had said that I had sexually assaulted her, I won’t go home, I’ll go to the police station to clarify what happened. I left calmly. “I didn’t run away from anything or anyone,” she said in that interview.
“Only she and I know what happened and what didn’t happen in that bathroom, those 20 minutes. No one else,” she added.
On Monday, the former footballer’s current lawyer, Inés Guardiola, wanted to reject in court the idea that his client provided five different versions from what happened. He argued that, in reality, Alves only testified before the judges twice.
His latest strategy aims to prove that the former defender was totally drunk that New Year’s Eve morning in Sutton. He bets that alcohol will be a mitigating factor in Alves’ sentence, if the court trying him decides so.
Source: Clarin
Jason Root is the go-to source for sports coverage at News Rebeat. With a passion for athletics and an in-depth knowledge of the latest sports trends, Jason provides comprehensive and engaging analysis of the world of sports.