Cristiano Ronaldo’s return to Manchester United may be overshadowed by a protest by feminist groups over an ongoing rape lawsuit, the Daily Mail’s Sportsmail reveals.
As the forward is set to join the Red Devils in a bout against Newcastle United, a protest had been planned by a number of unnamed feminist groups who want to bring attention to rape claims against the footballer raised by Kathryn Mayorga. It’s not clear what kind of action they are to take.
Mayorga claims that the footballer raped her at the Palms Casino Resort in Las Vegas back in 2009. The model-turned-teacher filed the police report just a day after the alleged assault took place, without naming the footballer directly. She eventually decided to hold Ronaldo accountable, but signed a $375,000 non-disclosure agreement with his legal team a year later.
US police reopened the case but came to a conclusion in 2019 that the allegations could not be “proven beyond reasonable doubt”.
Ronaldo’s legal team admitted back in 2019 that they had given Mayorga a six-figure sum but insisted that the settlement was “by no means a confession of guilt” but rather an attempt to keep the dispute quite.
Ronaldo, a father of four, has never denied having sex with Mayorga but insisted that the act was consensual. The world’s top scorer branded the rape claims “fake news”, saying that it went “against everything” he believed in.
But Mayorga has made another attempt to prosecute the five-time Ballon d’Or winner. In 2018, she filed a civil lawsuit in Las Vegas saying that she had been “mentally incapacitated” at the time the non-disclosure settlement was signed and that Ronaldo’s lawyers “exploited” her vulnerabilities to force her into the deal.
This civil lawsuit is still ongoing. The woman now demands some 65 million euros in damages from the star over her “past and future pain and suffering" that resulted from Ronaldo’s assault.