PART 1
The Woman Who Accuses Ronaldo of Rape
An American woman claims Cristiano Ronaldo raped her in Las
Vegas. Years ago, the soccer star paid her to remain silent. Now, the woman is
going public for the first time and filing a complaint against Ronaldo. She
possesses a document that could be extremely dangerous for him. By DER SPIEGEL
Staff
DER SPIEGEL
September 29, 2018
11:59 AM
She was supposed to be invisible, damned to silence.
Forever. Nobody was to ever learn about that night in Las Vegas back in 2009,
especially not her version of events.
She even signed a settlement deal and received a payoff
ensuring that she would never give voice to the accusations.
She signed, she says, out of fear for herself and her
family. And out of impotence, the inability to stand up to him. And out of the
hope that she could finally put the incident behind her. But, says Kathryn
Mayorga, she was never able to close that chapter.
The American is a slender 34-year-old with long, dark hair
and green eyes. Until recently, she worked at an elementary school. But she
quit, she says, "because I need all my strength now."
She needs the strength to stand up to the man who she
accuses of having raped her nine years ago -- accusations that he denies.
The man isn't just anybody. It is Cristiano Ronaldo,
arguably the best soccer player in the world, with vast amounts of success,
money and adoration from the fans. An anonymous woman versus Ronaldo -- the
discrepancy could hardly be greater.
They met on June 12, 2009 in a Las Vegas nightclub. Ronaldo
was there on vacation with his brother-in-law and cousin. It was the summer
when the star, then 24, would transfer from Manchester United to Real Madrid
for a then-record sum of 94 million euros.
Kathryn Mayorga, 25 at the time, was a budding model and one
of her jobs was to hang out with other young, beautiful women in front of bars
to lure in guests.
On that Friday in June, the paths of the model and the
multimillionaire crossed in the VIP section of Rain, a nightclub belonging to
Palms Casino Resort. Paparazzi photos show Mayorga standing close to Ronaldo
and talking. He is wearing a white shirt with a narrow black tie and she is in
a light gray dress with gold jewelry. He plays it cool while she beams at him.
Within hours, the gossip pages around the world would be busying themselves
with trying to figure out who this "mysterious brunette" is at
Ronaldo's side. The party continued in the early morning hours in Ronaldo's
penthouse in the nearby Hotel Palms Place. And only two people know what
happened in the bedroom there: Kathryn Mayorga and Cristiano Ronaldo.
What is clear is that the soccer star paid Mayorga $375,000
a few months later as part of an out-of-court settlement. In exchange, Mayorga
signed an agreement to never talk about her accusations that Cristiano Ronaldo
had raped her.
DER SPIEGEL reported on the non-disclosure agreement for the
first time in spring 2017. The documents pertaining to the agreement were made
available to the newsmagazine by the whistleblowing platform Football Leaks. In
the reporting for that article, DER SPIEGEL contacted Mayorga, who appears in
the story under the pseudonym Susan K. "No comment," was her
response. When journalists encountered her in front of her home, she ran away.
When the first article appeared, Ronaldo's agency Gestifute
released a statement saying, "the article is nothing but a piece of
journalistic fiction." The statement continued: "The newspaper has
based their entire narrative on documents which are unsigned and where the parties
are not identified."
That portrayal is incorrect.
Numerous documents in DER SPIEGEL's possession prove as
much, including some which have been signed by Ronaldo himself. The existence
of those documents could help explain why he has not, in the last
year-and-a-half, followed up on his threats to take DER SPIEGEL to court. In
its public statement, Gestifute also discredited the alleged victim, saying she
"refuses to come forward and confirm the veracity of the accusation."
It is a perfidious accusation. After all, the key element of
the out-of-court settlement was that Mayorga was not allowed to comment on the
incident. Should she do so, according to the deal, she would have to pay the
money back to Ronaldo and possibly damages as well.
Now, though, she has decided to talk anyway, telling her
story in detail for the first time. Why? What made her change her mind?
Essentially, there are three reasons. First, she has a new
lawyer, one who is both experienced and unflinching. He believes the
non-disclosure agreement is not legally binding and he has filed a civil
complaint against Ronaldo in Kathryn Mayorga's name. That complaint is
supported by a 27-page document that could have far-reaching consequences for
the football star. The document contains a version of how Ronaldo experienced
that night, including the following quote: "She said no and stop several
times."
Second, the world has changed for women who claim to have
been the victim of sexual assault. One year ago, accusations against the
American movie producer Harvey Weinstein were made public. According to those
claims, he spent decades harassing, molesting or even raping women. Weinstein
denies the accusations.
Money, Power and Fame
Once the scandal went public, the American actress Alyssa
Milano encouraged women who have experienced sexual harassment to go public
under the hashtag #MeToo.
Tens of thousands of women did so, changing the societal
climate in the process. It has since become much more difficult for
politicians, lawyers and the general public to ignore and play down sexual
violence against women, particularly in cases where the suspected perpetrator
possesses money, power and fame.
The #MeToo movement has also given many victims more courage
and self-confidence. Mayorga is one of them. She says she has spent many hours
in front of her computer reading the stories of other women.
The third reason is that she sees it as the only chance to
learn whether there are other women out there who say they were sexually abused
by Ronaldo. "It's something I've always wondered about," she says.
It's a few weeks ago in Las Vegas and Kathryn Mayorga is
sitting at a long, dark conference table in the offices of her lawyer together
with her mother Cheryl Mayorga and her therapist.
Kathryn is wearing black overalls and long, turquoise
earrings. She has made herself up carefully, but the makeup can't completely
disguise the tiredness in her eyes. For the last week, she says, she has been
having trouble sleeping.
She seems exhausted, but she is also extremely nervous. Her
eyes bounce around the room as she repeatedly brushes back her hair.
Mayorga takes a deep breath. First, she wants to talk about
her fears as she takes this next step and the words begin pouring out of her.
"It's a pretty famous guy. So I'm terrified. I'm scared." She is
worried that someone might do something to her, that the media and Ronaldo's
fans won't leave her alone. "The reason why I signed the contract in the
first place (was) because I didn't want my name out there."
She starts to cry, her breaths coming in shallow bursts. She
rolls back in her heavy leather chair and buries her face in her hands. Her
therapist is concerned, and they withdraw to a neighboring room for half an
hour.
Her mother Cheryl, 66, remains behind, a diminutive woman
with dark hair pulled up in a bun. She chooses her words carefully. "It's
never left her. Every day, she lives it," she says. "There were times
when she would call me and his -- he would be on a billboard or whatever, and
she would just completely disintegrate. Having to walk into a store to get a
pint of milk, and you've got his picture everywhere. (...) He's the soccer god
that everybody thinks is just perfect and flawless. (...) And she can't even
get out of bed some days." Cheryl Mayorga shakes her head. "It's just
wrong. We're behind her 100 percent."
'Just Simple People'
By "we," she means the entire Mayorga family.
Kathryn's father Larry, 64, and her brother Jason, 37, describe how that night
nine years ago changed Kathryn.
She was born and raised in Las Vegas. Her father, who is now
retired, worked as a fireman for 32 years while her mother spent most of her
time taking care of the children. "We're just simple people," says
Cheryl.
Kathryn played softball and soccer and was a member of the
Girl Scouts. But, her mother says, she suffers from Attention Deficit Disorder
and has a learning disability. Her daughter has trouble concentrating and
keeping her thoughts straight, Cheryl says, which is one reason she sometimes
speaks so quickly.
The door opens and Kathryn Mayorga comes back into the
conference room. She appears to have regained her composure. Her mother
provides a quick recap of what she said in the interim. "I did struggle a
lot growing up," Kathryn says. "It's hard for me to learn in a
classroom experience. I have documented disabilities (...) and was given extra
time," she adds: "I busted my ass at school and wanted to prove
something." She got her degree in journalism at the University of Nevada,
Las Vegas.
She talks about growing up in one of the entertainment
capitals of the United States. "We had so much fun. We'd go to hotel
parties, we'd go out and do things. (...) We would literally go, have a few
drinks, dance all night, and leave." She adds: "I like control."
Shortly after her graduation in 2008, she married her
boyfriend, a bartender from an Albanian family who also got the odd job
repairing computers, including those belonging to her parents. "At that
age, I'd graduated college, I need to be married, I had that pressure,"
she says. "And at first, I was on board with it."
But it wasn't meant to be. Around a year after their
wedding, the couple split up and Mayorga moved back in with her parents, whose
home is in one of the better neighborhoods of Las Vegas, complete with a
well-tended yard, a large garage, a beautiful pool and a nice view over the
city.
"I was really enjoying myself," says Mayorga.
"I was working out every day, eating vegan ... doing a lot of good stuff
with modelling." She says she also travelled a lot during that period,
something made possible by her job hanging out in front of bars.
The Night that Changed Her Life
Mayorga leans forward in her chair, a resolute look on her
face. "They tried to discredit me," she says, referring to Ronaldo's
legal team. "They tried to say: 'Well, the job you have is not a
"good girl" job,'" she says, adding that it was a normal job.
"They liked us to hold a drink like we're out and mingling with our
friends. So you get a water, you need something in your hand like you're
actually engaging with your friends. You're on a night out with the
girls."
Exhausted, she leans back to collect herself. Then she
begins to tell the story of that night -- the night that she says destroyed her
life. The night that she describes as though a video of it was playing in her
mind's eye, even though it was so long ago.
She was working that night too, and later went partying with
her friends. There was champagne on offer, but, she says: "I had a little,
but I was on a strict diet."
Then she got a message from her girlfriend Jordan, whose
name has been changed for this story. They met in Rain and went into the VIP
area. "Jordan's very into the nightclub scene, she knows a lot of
people," she says. "He just came up to me ... grabbed my arm, and he
was like: 'You! Come with me!' I was like, are you joking?"
She knew who he was and that he was partying in the club
that night. "Jordan told me he was there. I figured she knew that from her
soccer boyfriend," she says. "People were talking about him: 'Oh,
he's here. He's famous.' And I was like, 'I think I've looked him up
before.'"
Ronaldo laughed at her, she says, because she didn't
immediately want to join him. Then he got her a drink, she says, and introduced
her to his entourage. "'This is like my brother,' and he introduces me to
some guy and people we were with. And 'this is like family,' this guy and this
guy."
They chatted for a bit and then she says he asked for her
telephone number. "I gave him my number and he just left.... And I was like,
'OK, cool.'"
Mayorga says that she then went looking for Jordan and found
her outside with a couple of friends. At that moment, she says, a text message
from Ronaldo appeared on her phone that read something like: "Hey, bring
your friends. Come up to this party." She and Jordan decided to take up
the invitation at the Palms Place, the hotel next door. Ronaldo and his
entourage, Mayorga says, were waiting in the lobby, where they told the girls
that the party had already ended.
"He's like, 'we're going to do our own party.' I pull
Jordan aside and I think I said to her: 'Let's just take a picture and then
let's go.' There's actually a really nice view."
In Walks Ronaldo
In 2009, the Palms Casino Resort was the place to be in Las
Vegas. Ronaldo had apartment 57306, one of the penthouses, where a night goes
today for around $1,000.
The apartment includes a kitchen, a large living room and
two bedrooms, each with a luxurious bathroom attached. On the balcony is a
Jacuzzi with a view out over the city.
Once they arrived in the suite, Kathryn recalls, everyone
suddenly jumped into the whirlpool and Jordan sat down at the edge. "We
were like, 'these guys are cute.' But still, it's late. And I had a photoshoot
that morning." She adds: "I didn't want to get in the water to ruin
my dress."
Ronaldo, Mayorga says, offered her something to wear in the
Jacuzzi. "Jordan was having fun and she was in town and I wanted her to
have fun, so I said: 'You know, I'm going to go put these clothes on.'"
She says she then went to the bathroom to change, one of the
ones attached to a bedroom. Just as she was standing there only in her panties,
she says, Ronaldo suddenly walked in, his penis hanging out of his shorts.
As she tells her story, Mayorga pauses briefly and opens her
eyes so wide that the whites of her eyes became visible around her pupils.
"Basically he ... he begged me to touch his penis for 30 seconds."
She shakes her head. "When I wouldn't touch it, he
begged me to suck it. Like, what an idiot! (...) I was laughing at him because
I thought, 'Is this a joke?' This guy that is so famous and so hot ... he's a
frickin' loser and a creep." But Ronaldo wouldn't be put off. "He was
like, 'I'll let you go if you give me a kiss.' I said, 'OK, I'll kiss you but
I'm not going to touch your nasty penis.'" Mayorga swears that she only kissed
him and didn't otherwise touch him.
The kiss, though, she says, only turned him on more.
"He starts to come on to me very strong. And he starts to do stuff to me
and touch me and grab me and go down on me. I pushed him away and kept saying
'No.'"
At that moment, she says, one of his friends came in and
asked: What are you doing? "I immediately grabbed my dress and put it on.
And I said: 'We're leaving right now.' And I looked at him. He said: 'Yeah,
yeah. We'll leave.'"
Mayorga sits quietly for a moment before continuing. "I
thought everything was over." But it wasn't, she claims. "He pulls me
into the room. I still wasn't afraid at all. I was just like, 'Man, this guy's
adamant.' The most adamant I've ever dealt with. I explain to him: 'Listen dude,
this is not going to happen.'"
'No, No, No'
But Ronaldo allegedly didn't give up. "I turned away.
He tried to take my underwear off. I turned away from him and curled up into a
ball. And I was holding my vagina. And that's when he jumped on me." She
says she said "no, no, no, no."
Ronaldo, Kathryn Mayorga claims, raped her anally. Without a
condom. Without lubricant.
"After he assaulted me, he wouldn't let me leave again.
He wouldn't let me leave. And he was calling me 'baby, baby.' He gave me this
look, this guilty look. Almost like he felt bad. I don't remember but I'm
pretty sure he said 'sorry' or 'Are you hurt?' And by this time, he's (...) on
his knees. He says the 99 percent thing." He insisted, she says, that he
was "a good guy" except for the "one percent."
That was the moment, she says, that she first understood
what had happened to her. "It happened so quick. I didn't really know what
happened. (...) I felt like I was actually floating almost. It felt like I
wasn't there. It was out-of-body. I really can't describe it in words."
Next, she says, "I thought I had some disease. I thought he had fucking
AIDS. So I was like: 'You have to tell me if I have a disease. Do I have a
disease?' And he's like: 'No, no. I'm a professional athlete and I get tested
every three months. I couldn't play my game with a disease.'"
For a moment, it is completely still in the conference room
in Las Vegas. Kathryn Mayorga stares at the table in front of her. Her father,
Larry, has joined us in the lawyer's conference room, quietly taking a seat. He
is wearing a black T-shirt and a black baseball cap. He is a man who likes to
laugh, but the longer he listens to his daughter, the more anger and
helplessness are reflected in his face. His daughter, he would later say, had
never before opened up so much.
Then Kathryn Mayorga begins to speak again. "I said:
'No one's going to know about this.' He might have asked me to be cool when I
walked out. I don't remember though."
There is one person who says she still remembers seeing
Mayorga come out of the room: her friend Jordan. "Kathryn looked totally
disheveled. Her hair was messed up, her make-up smeared," Jordan says. She
says she kept asking Ronaldo "What did you do to my friend?"
Mayorga recalls the scene similarly. In response to Jordan's
question, both women say, Ronaldo only answered: Everything's fine. We're
friends.
"I was in a trance," Mayorga says. They sat down
at the edge of the Jacuzzi. "At first, he sat next to me, and I moved away
because I didn't want to be near him." She continues: "Jordan said I
was staring at the water (but) I don't remember staring at the water. (...)
Then it got quiet and awkward. He finally got up and he left. As soon as he
left, all I remember is falling into the Jacuzzi."
PART 2
Her Name Is Kathryn
The Woman Who Accuses Ronaldo of Rape
Kathryn Mayorga
An American woman claims Cristiano Ronaldo raped her in Las
Vegas. Years ago, the soccer star paid her to remain silent. Now, the woman is
going public for the first time and filing a complaint against Ronaldo. She
possesses a document that could be extremely dangerous for him. By DER SPIEGEL
Staff
DER SPIEGEL
September 29,
2018 11:59 AM
She bends deeply forward in her chair. It looks as though
she's suddenly thinking that her fall into the Jacuzzi might make her look bad.
Again, she starts talking extremely quickly. "I had some wine at
work," she says, and that she drank a sip or two of champagne afterwards.
"I was dead sober. One-hundred percent."
The fall into the water, she says, helped her collect
herself a little bit. She said to herself: "OK, you've got to be cool now!
Jordan kept asking me (if I was OK). I started laughing and (...) I said: 'No,
no, nothing happened. God, I can't believe we're ... look at the view!'"
She shrugs her shoulders, but the gesture seems more forlorn than indifferent.
She says they then left. "His friends gave me a towel."
On the way to the elevator, she raved to Jordan: What a
night, what fun! At some point they said goodnight to each other.
It was only when she finally got to her car that the pain
started. "Every heartbeat I remember was like a piercing pain." She
says she drove to a hospital but was afraid of going inside. She then drove
home and lay in her bed at home and tried to sleep. But couldn't.
Just a few hours later, she got a call from Jordan.
"She was like, 'We're all over the news!'" At the same time, says
Mayorga, she was getting text messages asking: Are you dating that famous
soccer guy? Only then did she see the pictures. "They were everywhere.
Every news outlet." The photos showed her flirting with Ronaldo in the VIP
area of Rain.
She says she immediately told Jordan, that's not good,
that's not good. But Jordan, she says, didn't understand what she meant --
until she finally came out with it: "Jordan. He raped me!"
Jordan, she says, was deeply concerned and immediately
advised her to be careful, saying that football players have a lot of power. In
such cases, she said, there is no such thing as justice.
When the pain refused to subside, she started to worry.
"I was like, 'I'm really in pain.' And I was kind of panicking," says
Mayorga. She says she called a childhood friend of hers and told her what had
happened. The friend advised her to call the police anonymously.
'Bigger Than You Think'
"I didn't want them to know who I was," she says.
"I was like, 'I'm not going to say his name. I'm not going to say his
name. (...) I said, 'I need someone to take me to the hospital.' I wanted to
get that rape kit done. (...) So they come, and the sergeant and like five cop
cars and it was like this huge mess!"
Together, Kathryn and her parents try to reconstruct what
police officer said what to whom and when. Their memories diverge slightly, and
ultimately the only thing they can agree on is that the police were there. And
that someone put her dress and underwear into a plastic bag and carried them
out of the house. At some point much later in the day, Kathryn Mayorga says she
finally gave in to her mother's urging and told her what had happened.
Larry Mayorga starts speaking. He remembers standing outside
in his firefighter uniform. "The detective told me that whoever assaulted
her (...) 'Whoever did it, your daughter needs to let us know who this
is.'" He looks at his daughter. "And then I talked to you and you
refused." He says his daughter then told him: "'You don't understand
dad. This is bigger than you think.'"
There is a recording of Mayorga's call to the Las Vegas
Metropolitan Police Department at 2:16 p.m. on June 13, 2009. In the so-called
"computer-aided dispatch" or CAD report, which DER SPIEGEL has
obtained, her report has a case number which later makes an appearance in the
out-of-court settlement between Kathryn Mayorga and Cristiano Ronaldo.
In the CAD report, under the heading "Type," which
refers to the kind of complaint it records, the number 426 can be found. It is
the code for sexual offenses.
The police officer who spoke with Mayorga noted that the
caller was extremely distraught and did not want to provide the name of the
alleged perpetrator. All she would say is that it was a "public
figure" and an "athlete." The officer noted down that she had not
bathed.
The report also notes that the police arrived at the
Mayorgas' home shortly after 2:30 p.m. on that Saturday afternoon. They radioed
back to headquarters on several occasions, where an officer noted that the
alleged victim wanted to go to the hospital for a rape kit examination, which
is performed on victims of sexual violence to secure evidence and to examine
and photograph possible injuries.
The police brought Mayorga to the University Medical Center
just before 4 p.m. The CAD report notes that at 5:15 p.m., she had offered
vague information about the alleged scene of the crime, saying that it was a
hotel "near" Flamingo Road, where the hotel Palms Place is located.
"They kept trying to make me say his name. And I was
like 'I'm not going to say his name,'" says Mayorga. They also wanted to
know where it had happened, but she was scared of providing too many details.
Only the nurse who examined her, she says, showed understanding. "She's
like: You need to be worrying about yourself right now. (...) You're doing the
rape kit, so if you want to (prosecute) later on, you always can."
Three Months to Cry
The examination report shows that Mayorga was treated in the
hospital for two hours. It reveals that she was "anxious, cooperative,
pleasant." She said that she occasionally drinks alcohol and she was
tested for drugs, but the results came back negative.
In a checklist, the nurses recorded what Mayorga had done
after the alleged rape: changed clothes, brushed her teeth, urinated, ate and
drank.
Under the category reserved for the type of attack, the
nurse noted "patient's rectum penetrated" and that ejaculation had
occurred "in assailant's hands."
They tested her for sexually transmitted diseases and
swabbed her mouth and rectum on the search for possible traces of DNA. Her
injuries -- a circumferential swelling with bruising and a laceration -- were
photographed. She was then given Zithromax and Rocephin, two antibiotics, and
released.
In the ensuing days, she hardly left her room, she says.
"I felt sick and I felt confused. And I still had no emotion. No emotion.
Through this whole thing ... it took me three months to cry."
Her mother Cheryl interjects: "I wanted to hold her. I
wanted to comfort her," she says. "We tried to go in (to her room),
and she's: 'Get out!'" She says she then engaged a lawyer. The police
"told her she was going to have all these hospital bills and medical
bills" if she didn't say his name, says Cheryl.
A friend recommended a lawyer named Mary Smith, whose name
has been changed for this story. At the time, she had a small practice in Las
Vegas. The Mayorgas describe Smith as friendly and kind-hearted. Looking back,
though, they think it was a big mistake not to have contacted a lawyer with
more experience in such matters.
The lawyer advised her to make a complete statement to the
police. And two or three weeks later, Mayorga estimates, a police officer came
and recorded her statement.
As part of this statement, she also mentioned Ronaldo's
name. "I printed out pictures of him. Because the guy didn't know who he
was." International soccer stars, after all, aren't necessarily well known
in the U.S.
The officer, she says, was an older man. When she told him
that she had kissed Ronaldo in the bathroom, she says, the officer reacted by
saying: "'Uh-oh, that's going to be a problem, that's going to be a
problem!' And he's like: 'Well, just so you know, you getting an attorney, that
doesn't look good,'" Mayorga recalls. "He was just like reaming me.
And I said, 'My parents told me to get the attorney!'" She adds: "I
didn't know what to do. I'm trying to hide this! I didn't really want this
out."
She Wanted Justice
In the end, she pleaded with the police officer to do
nothing with her statement, saying that she still needed some time and that she
wasn't emotionally stable. He promised her, she says, to wait until she was
ready.
From that point on, Mayorga was trapped in this dilemma: On
the one hand, she didn't want to go public with her name or his. On the other,
she wanted justice. Her lawyer, she says, then proposed clearing up everything
out of court.
In the U.S., sexual assaults are often reconciled with
out-of-court settlements, with victims and perpetrators reaching an agreement
without the case ever going to trial.
Sexual assault is the most serious crime in the state of
Nevada after murder. If convicted, a person faces life in prison. But for a
conviction to occur, guilt needs to be determined beyond reasonable doubt --
and that is especially difficult with sex crimes. Often, it's one person's
testimony against that of another.
Many victims decide to pursue civil rather than criminal
proceedings. The goal of the former is not to convict the alleged perpetrator
but to indemnify the victim financially. The burden of proof is considerably
lower in such proceedings. It only needs to be more than 50 percent likely that
the alleged perpetrator committed the crime.
But a civil proceeding also has its drawbacks. Although the
victim can apply for the case to be tried under a pseudonym, it is public and,
of course, there is no guarantee that the person's anonymity will remain
protected.
For this reason, many victims decide to resolve their case
out of court, for example by mediation, in which a neutral person acts as
mediator. It then ends in a settlement agreement.
This kind of procedure can be advantageous for both sides.
The identities of the perpetrators and victims can be protected. The entire
process is shorter than a trial. The distressing details of the rape don't
necessarily have to be rehashed.
These arguments made sense to Mayorga. "I wanted to
teach him a lesson. I wanted him to deal with it, to have to face me," she
says. She also says that she wasn't looking to enrich herself, but she wanted
him to pay for her treatment. "I'm not going to pay for my goddamn
treatment," she says, describing her thinking at the time. "He raped
me. He's going to pay for my goddamn treatment!"
The Questionnaire
The Football Leaks documents show that Mayorga's lawyer Mary
Smith contacted a lawyer of Ronaldo's in England in mid-2009. She said she
represented a plaintiff in Las Vegas in a case against the football player. The
lawyer forwarded the mail onward to Ronaldo's Portuguese lawyer Carlos Osório
de Castro, who has represented Ronaldo for years on all kinds of legal matters.
"What do you think this is about?"
Osório de Castro answered: "No idea."
By the end of July, it was clear that it was serious.
Several lawyers had become involved in the case by then, including one based in
California who had represented several prominent personalities in court.
Ronaldo's lawyers discussed what the best course of action might be.
A list containing hundreds of questions was submitted to
Ronaldo, his brother-in-law and his cousin. In the document, Ronaldo is
referred to as "X" while Kathryn Mayorga is referred to as "Ms.
C."
There are several versions of the questionnaire. The
questions remain more or less consistent on all of them, but the answers do
not.
In one version from December 2009, Ronaldo speaks of
consensual sex and that there had been no indication that she wasn't OK with it
during sex nor did it seem that she wasn't doing well afterward.
But there is another, much earlier version. It is the
document that could have serious consequences for Ronaldo. It was sent via
email in September 2009. The sender was a lawyer from Osório de Castro's firm.
The recipients were Osório de Castro himself and an additional colleague.
In response to the question as to whether Ms. C. ever raised
her voice, screamed or called out, X responded, according to the document:
"She said no and stop several times."
In the document, X says that she was lying on her side.
"I entered her from behind. It was rude. We didn't change position. 5/7
minutes. She said that she didn't want to, but she made herself
available." And further: "But she kept saying 'No.' 'Don't do it.'
'I'm not like the others.' I apologized afterwards."
He is quoted in the document as saying that she never
screamed and never called out for someone.
Question: Did Ms. C. say anything afterwards about the sex
being too brutal?
X: "She didn't complain about it being brutal. She
complained that I forced her. She didn't say anything about wanting to go to
the police."
In the answers to the list of questions, Ronaldo confirms
Mayorga's version on the following points: She said no several times. And he
apologized afterwards.
Their stories contradict each other on several points. One
of those is whether Mayorga pleasured Ronaldo with her hand. He says she did,
she says she didn't. Ronaldo says they engaged in foreplay in the bathroom. He
also portrays their encounter beforehand in the club differently: He says the
women had asked to be let into the VIP section and had had a few drinks. He
also says they didn't exchange numbers, but that he invited the women to his
hotel straightaway. Mayorga, according to some of Ronaldo's companions, didn't
appear disturbed in any way when she later emerged from the room.
In December 2009, Ronaldo's lawyer Osório de Castro upped
the pressure on the American members of the legal team: "The clock is ticking
and we must decide how to proceed and prepare for the battle."
In the meantime, Ronaldo's lawyers in the U.S. had hired a
private detective to find out all they could about Mayorga. He collected
details about her life, gathered information about parking tickets and the
like, watched her house and spent hours shadowing her.
In one entry, he noted: "At approximately 8:00 PM
Kathryn Mayorga arrived at the MGM Grand Hotel/Las Vegas. Mayorga drove her
personal vehicle and parked in the self-parking garage. She exited her vehicle
and walked to the hotel. She was met at the elevator by an individual (...).
They embraced at the elevator." On another day, he observed her in a
restaurant: "Mayorga was drinking red wine. She had over three (3) glasses
of wine."
Mayorga had noticed that she was being followed. On one
occasion, she went to lunch with a friend and "there was an investigator
looking at us and writing notes down. And we were laughing, like: 'Could you
make it obvious!' He was just looking at us and writing."
Her father Larry says: "I took her to the gym, working
out (teaching) her how to punch, stuff like that. She wanted to learn how to
defend herself. We worried about her back then."
Ultimately, the bill for the private detective, according to
the documents, ended up being tens of thousands of dollars, but Ronaldo's
lawyers weren't happy with the results.
One of the American lawyers insisted in an email that a
second private detective be hired in an effort to discount the alleged victim's
claims that she has been suffering psychologically from the consequences of the
crime. "Hopefully," the lawyer wrote, we can "discover the
occasions between now and Jan. 12 that (she) does go out and enjoy the
nightlife and the men of Las Vegas."
Ronaldo's lawyers also apparently considered filing charges
against Mayorga for blackmail. The problem with that strategy, though, is that
she hadn't named a sum nor had she made any other demands.
The two parties met on Jan. 12, 2010, in Las Vegas. An
experienced mediator was on hand and Ronaldo's team of lawyers drove up in a
limousine. The football star himself did not make an appearance.
'I Wanted Him to Deal With It'
When the mediation began, Mayorga was in one room with her
lawyer while Ronaldo's legal team was in a neighboring room. Mayorga's parents
and brother were sitting in the hallway outside.
"It was stressing me out" says Kathryn Mayorga
about that day. Her face is vacant, the fingers of her right hand stroking her
turquoise earrings. "I wanted him there at that meeting. I wanted him to
deal with it, to have to face me. That's what I wanted most of all."
She says that the mediator went back and forth between the
two rooms to tell each side about the arguments presented by the other and,
ultimately, to come up with a settlement.
Ronaldo's lawyer Osório de Castro had travelled to Las Vegas
for the meeting, during which he sent text messages to his client. "The mediator
now says that she has broken out in tears and that she is shaken because she
thinks you're not interested in this matter and are someplace else
altogether," Osório de Castro wrote: "So far, there has been no talk
about money, but that's coming."
Ronaldo answered, "OK."
Forty-seven minutes after the first SMS, Ronaldo received a
second message from Las Vegas. This time, it was just a number: "950,000
dollars." It appears to be the sum that the counterparty was seeking in
compensation. Ronaldo wrote back: "That's the amount?"
Osório de Castro answered: "That is the first demand:
That's 660,000 euros. We won't accept it. The negotiations are
continuing."
Ronaldo then asked: "Is that too much?" Osório de
Castro replied: "I think so. I think we'll close this for less."
Ronaldo then demanded: "It has to be less!" His
lawyer replied: "OK."
Mayorga's family was sitting outside the room. Recalling
that day, they say they could hear their daughter crying and screaming through
the door. "They said horrible things, like they basically tried to say
that I was a hooker, that because I did that modeling job, that that was
hooker-ish. (...) I don't even know how they sleep at night," says Kathryn
Mayorga.
"I was just so angry," says Kathryn's father
Larry. "I was so mad that I couldn't go in there for her. (...) I just
stepped back and said: 'Bite your tongue, Larry, and just.... This is her life
and this is her decision. She's an adult.'"
Kathryn's brother clearly remembers the day of the
mediation. The whole experience "was absolutely disgusting. It was
horrible," he says. "Ronaldo's room was full of lawyers. (...) You
could hear them laughing and joking," he says. "And then in the other
room, (my sister) is crying."
'Just Despicable'
Just like his parents, Jason Mayorga says he had a bad
feeling about the talks. Kathryn's lawyer, he says, agreeing with his parents,
"didn't seem like she had a handle on things." When the mediator
would go into the room with Ronaldo's lawyers, he says, "it was like: 'Hey
guys! I'm back again!' You know, just despicable!"
Kathryn Mayorga says that at some point, all she could do
was lie on the floor. "I was hysterical, I couldn't even talk. I was
completely unstable." Her lawyer suggested at that point that the
negotiations be stopped. "I was too unstable to sign that paper."
But, she says, she knew it was now or never. "I was like: 'I will never go
through this again. This will break me next time. I cannot do this again. If I
walk away now, having to do this again will just break me.'"
At the end of the day, Osório de Castro wrote to his client:
"We are finally finalizing this after 12 hours for 260,000 euros. On top
of that will be the costs for mediation that I already told you about, plus a
few payments to the lawyers who are now trying to formalize the transaction. I
know that is a lot of money, but I think it was the best way out -- and it also
wasn't easy to get at all."
The sum that Ronaldo was supposed to pay to Kathryn Mayorga
was formalized in a so-called "Settlement Memorialization:" $375,000.
At the time, that's how much Ronaldo earned each week at Real Madrid.
The lawyers worked on the precise wording of the agreement
into the summer, adjusting paragraphs and modifying formulations. One issue
addressed, for example, was how much Mayorga was allowed to say during her
therapy sessions. Ronaldo's legal team insisted that she be prohibited from
mentioning his name even to her therapist and demanded that she not be allowed
to complain about him. They even went so far as to insist that she not speak
about him to her family. This would create a hard-to-control atmosphere, one of
his lawyers wrote in an email.
Ronaldo's lawyers sought to guarantee the elimination of any
possibility that the secret would ever be revealed. The question of how Mayorga
would pay taxes on the settlement money also arose. If she didn't do it, the
lawyers worried, the U.S. tax authorities might develop an interest in the sum
in her bank account and she would have to explain where she got the money from.
As part of its reporting for this story, DER SPIEGEL learned
that Ronaldo's lawyers chose to wire the $375,000 from the account of a company
named Tollin, based in the tax haven of British Virgin Islands, a company that
had kept Ronaldo's advertising and sponsoring revenues for years. As such, it
appears that Ronaldo paid for the Las Vegas case using sponsor money. DER
SPIEGEL queries on the matter went unanswered.
The final out-of-court settlement included 11 clauses. The
most important of them is the one prohibiting Mayorga from ever speaking about
the incident and requiring her to drop all accusations against Ronaldo. And she
was required to "provide her certification that she has permanently
destroyed or deleted any and all electronic, written or other materials
generated or received as a result of the alleged events."
The Letter
Among those documents is a letter. Because Ronaldo failed to
come to the arbitration meeting, Kathryn Mayorga insisted that she be allowed
to write him a letter that had to be read to him within two weeks. The requirement
was part of the settlement document.
DER SPIEGEL has obtained a copy of the letter which is
almost six pages long. It is difficult to read. Essentially a long, desperate
wail.
"I screamed NO NO NO NO NO NOOOO over and over I begged
you to stop."
"You jumped on me from behind," she writes,
"with a white rosary on your neck!! What would God think of that!!! What
would God think of you!!!"
"I hope you realize what you have done and learned from
this terrible mistake!! Don't take another woman's life as you did mine!!"
"I don't care about your money that was the last thing
I wanted!! I wanted justice! There really is 'no justice' in this case."
In addition to Mayorga, several lawyers also signed the
settlement, with the Portuguese lawyer Osório de Castro signing on behalf of
Ronaldo. The football star himself appears in the document under the alias
"Topher." A "Confidential Side Letter Agreement" makes it
clear that the pseudonym refers to the football player. And that paper was
signed by Ronaldo himself.
The signatures on the documents meant that for Ronaldo, the
Las Vegas case was over.
For her, though, Mayorga says, it was just the beginning of
an extended period of suffering.
Her mother says the first years were bad. "She just
became, like, more insecure. She pushed us away. Totally. Totally shut down ...
became this shell. You want to go in and say, 'Let us do something. And help.'
And she would push us away," she says, her voice cracking.
"I had serious suicidal thoughts," Kathryn
interjects. "She did," her mother agrees.
Her father says: "I didn't realize that this was going
to continue to be with her." He adds: "I thought she could get over
it. But she never did. It just ... she's not the same person."
"Before the incident, she was like my little
sister," says her brother. "We'd go out to eat, dinner, we'd hang
out, go to parks, see movies, stuff like that." Now, though, things have
changed, he says. "She has so much pent up aggression (...) a complete
demeanor change."
Shortly after the police officer finished recording her
statement, Kathryn Mayorga began going to therapy. "I wasn't allowed to
mention the name to my therapist," she says. "I always had to be
careful what I said because of my contract."
Punishment from God
She says she only took part a couple of times in group
therapy sessions for rape victims. It is one of the moments during our
interview when her eyes filled with tears. "I just listened to other
people," she says. "I've had incidences where women get upset with
me, like, 'Why are you here? If you're not going to share it, don't come here.'
I've had girls be really mean to me because I don't want to share."
In the first five years after her encounter with Ronaldo,
she was obsessed, she says once she regains her composure. "I was obsessed
with karma." Every day, she says, she would check the internet to see if
anything had happened to Ronaldo, a punishment from God, so to speak, for what
he had done to her.
She says she had to quit her job. Even just seeing the hotel
with its illuminated letters was too much for her. Doing something with her
university degree was out of the question, she says. And the thoughts of suicide
kept returning. Only when she was traveling, she says, did she have a sense of
freedom, far away from everything. But not always. "I go to Italy and he
... he's famous there! So it's like every little kid's wearing his shirt."
A smile struggles onto her face.
In the first year, she drank a significant amount of
alcohol, she then admits. "Yeah, so for ... about a year I drank every
day," she says. "And it was for me, that was where I felt
normal." But with her friends and on Facebook, she says, she tried to act
as though nothing had changed.
Only after five years, Kathryn Mayorga says, did she start
to feel a bit better. Not to the point that she would have been able to be in a
normal relationship, "but after the fifth year I started becoming more
happy."
To a large part, that had to do with her new job. She
started working as a physical education teacher in an elementary school.
"Teaching really helped me with my depression and my anxiety. Working with
children ... the kids always had me stimulated," she says.
But she was never actually happy, she says. "I've had
like these serious breakdowns. And again, blaming of the rape. And I blame him,
and I blame myself for signing that thing."
Denials
And then, in spring 2017, the article appeared in DER
SPIEGEL. "Everything was there that nobody was supposed to know about. I
read the comments...." Kathryn Mayorga presses her lips together. "I
care what people think." Among the online comments pertaining to the story
were things like: "As if Ronaldo even needs to rape a woman."
"That's what I thought," Mayorga says quietly.
Prior to the publication of that article last year, DER
SPIEGEL gave Ronaldo the opportunity to comment on the accusations. In an email
sent on April 10, 2017, a list of questions was sent to him. His Munich lawyer
Johannes Kreile answered on his behalf: "We categorically reject the
accusations raised in your questions," he replied. He added that his
client would "take action against any untrue factual claims as well as any
violation of his right to privacy." The lawyer also demanded that DER
SPIEGEL "desist from reporting" on the matter.
On the day it was published, the article made waves
internationally. But the Gestifute statement was quoted just as often, in which
the story was branded a work of "journalistic fiction."
Four days later, Ronaldo scored three goals in a Champions
League match against Bayern Munich and then three more against Atlético Madrid.
The Mayorga story quickly faded into the background.
When a second DER SPIEGEL article on the accusations hit the
newsstands, Ronaldo posted a video of his oldest son, Cristiano, Jr. The video
shows the six-year-old shooting a penalty shot just like his father. The video
was viewed 12 million times.
On Facebook alone, Ronaldo has 121 million followers.
Partly out of fear that Ronaldo could start looking for who
the source was for the DER SPIEGEL article, Mayorga found herself a new lawyer.
Leslie Mark Stovall, 65, is a different caliber than her
first legal representative. His gray hair pulled back in a pony tail, Stovall
has been practicing law in Las Vegas for the last 30 years. There are those who
recall him showing up in court wearing jeans and a cowboy hat.
Stovall has plenty of trial experience in the courtroom,
even representing himself on one occasion. In 2001, he filed an incorrect tax
return, he admits during his first meeting with DER SPIEGEL. He was suspended
from the bar for two years. "I can't sugarcoat it," he says. Stovall
is eager to avoid giving his opponents any openings.
The Legal Strategy
Stovall studied the files pertaining to Kathryn Mayorga's
case for several months in preparation for the civil complaint against Ronaldo.
"Our claim seeks to have the settlement and non-disclosure agreement
declared void," Stovall argues. "Kathryn was not competent to enter
into the agreement because of the psychological injury she sustained from the
sexual assault," he adds. "And that renders it voidable."
According to Stovall, Ronaldo's legal team was aware of
Kathryn Mayorga's psychological weakness. And more than that: "They
developed a strategy that took advantage of her emotional state."
Mayorga's condition was also discussed in emails exchanged between Ronaldo's
lawyers.
Stovall arranged for Mayorga to undergo an examination in
April of this year by a forensic psychologist. In his diagnosis, he found that
she is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and clinical depression as
a "direct and exclusive consequence of Mr. Ronaldo's sexual assault
perpetration."
In addition, he says that her learning disability was not
accounted for during the arbitration session. As such, he argues, she was
unable to truly recognize the consequences of the agreement and the legal
terminology it includes. Thus, she did not ultimately have the necessary
competence to sign the document.
But the out-of-court settlement, Stovall believes, is also
invalid for another reason. "In my opinion," he says, "those
documents are evidence of a criminal conspiracy to conceal and obstruct the
prosecution of that sexual assault."
And then Stovall goes even further. "It is absolutely
legal to defend yourself. It is absolutely appropriate for a person who has
committed a crime to hire investigators and lawyers to go out and do the best
they can to defend that individual. But there is a line. And the line is: Those
individuals cannot obstruct justice. They cannot obstruct the process of
investigating a crime and the prosecution of a crime. When you cross over from
defending a criminal to obstructing, concealing criminal activity for the
benefit of your client, that in and of itself is a crime! And that's what has
occurred in this case. In my opinion."
Pinocchio
He refers to Harvey Weinstein and the American actor Bill
Cosby. "These serial sex offenders appear to me to be enabled by ... a
team of lawyers and others who go out and use these agreements to suppress
prosecutions, and it enables these people to continue to engage in sexual assaults."
Filing a complaint against Ronaldo's lawyers, Stovall says,
could have a lasting effect. "I don't know if these lawyers would be
willing to do this if they were at risk of criminal prosecution."
There is also, though, reason to believe that Ronaldo's side
may have violated one of the clauses of the out-of-court settlement itself. As
part of the settlement, Ronaldo's lawyer Osório de Castro agreed to read his
client the letter from Kathryn Mayorga within two weeks of receiving it. The
American lawyer sent a reminder to Ronaldo's Portuguese lawyer at the end of
September 2010. "By my calculation," the lawyer wrote, "tomorrow
is two weeks since the letter was delivered to you. Accordingly, please confirm
if the letter has been read to Topher." Topher is a reference to Ronaldo.
Just over an hour later, Osório de Castro responded: "I
confirm that the letter has been read to Topher by me." Osório de Castro
also copied the email to a fellow lawyer in Portugal. That lawyer's response
consisted only of a single word: "Pinocchio."
In its statement denying all allegations against Ronaldo,
his agency Gestifute likewise states that this "alleged letter" from
the "so-called victim" was actually "never received" by
Ronaldo.
Kathryn Mayorga, for her part, is focused only on one thing,
she says: preparing as best she can for what lies ahead. She has quit her job
at the elementary school and has indefinitely disappeared and is now in an
unknown location. She is no longer reachable.
Cristiano Ronaldo has also been unreachable. In the last
year and a half, DER SPIEGEL has given him repeated opportunities to share his
version of what happened back in 2009. In addition to emails confronting him
with the reporting results, DER SPIEGEL has also asked him many times for in-person
interviews. All of these attempts have been rejected, including the most recent
attempt. One of Ronaldo's lawyers merely responded that all reporting on the
subject is unlawful.
But it looks as though Ronaldo will, in fact, have to
revisit the case and speak about what happened on that night in Las Vegas nine
years ago. In the last several weeks, the police have spoken with Kathryn
Mayorga on several occasions and questioned her again.
The Nevada criminal code includes the following statute: If
a sexual assault has been documented in time by the police, it will never fall
under the statute of limitations.
By Rafael Buschmann, Andreas Meyhoff, Nicola Naber, Gerhard
Pfeil, Antje Windmann, Christoph Winterbach and Michael Wulzinger
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