“Clearly I did not feel respected, at that moment I was not respected at any time either as a player or as a person.” This was stated by Jenni Hermoso weeks ago in relation to the controversial kiss that the then president of the Spanish Football Federation (FEF), Luis Rubiales, gave her when giving a statement before the Prosecutor’s Office. In fact, her testimony served as the basis for the complaint that the Public Ministry later filed before the National Court against the now former federation leader for the alleged crimes of sexual assault and coercion.
To questions from the lieutenant prosecutor of the Court. Marta Durántez, the current player of the Mexican team Pachuca, stated that she was being “subjected to something that I never sought or did to find myself in that situation,” she revealed; “I don’t deserve to have lived through this.” Especially, she added, when what she and the rest of the team members were experiencing was “something historic”, in relation to their victory in the World Cup final against Sweden played in Sydney, at the end of which those events took place.
According to his statement before the Prosecutor’s Office, reported by Telecinco, in the celebration of the triumph -coinciding with the awarding of medals-, he greeted the Queen and the Infanta before hugging Rubiales out of emotion and “the adrenaline”, which led to laughingly commenting “what we’ve got mixed up.” After her, the then head of her FEF jumped on her in a surprising way and told her »we have won this World Cup thanks to you«.
“The next thing,” he continued with his story of what happened, “was his hands on my head and then I didn’t hear anything else.” “I saw myself with the kiss on my mouth and I immediately went down to the stage with my companions,” Hermoso recalled when asked by the prosecutor, who asked him directly if the famous kiss was consensual – as Rubiales argues in his defense -, before which Hermoso flatly denies: “No.”
No time to react
At this point, he pointed out that he did not have time to react because “at no time could I expect something like this to happen in the end (…) In a trusted person, I think no one would expect that he would use that moment to do something.” like that, no matter how spontaneous it was,” Hermoso reproached. The player also explained that when she came down from the awards stage she told what happened with Rubiales to two of her teammates, Alexia Putellas and Irene Paredes.
Regarding what happened later, with statements from the Federation highlighting the then president’s version and questioning what was said from the soccer player’s entourage, she is clear: “They tarnished my image, I felt that I “Nobody protected me,” in a direct allusion to the Federation. “They were asking me to protect them, to help them, but at no time did I feel that anyone was protecting me,” she said about the calls and attempts by the organization to modify her version of what happened.
The player said that once the champions were in the locker room, the team’s sports director, Ana Álvarez, came in and told her that the president needed her. When she saw Rubiales, she insisted that there was “a lot” of talk about the kiss and she told him. He tried to explain the action “again.”
She felt coerced
Immediately afterwards, they entered the girls’ locker room together and the then president “diverted the topic a little” by announcing that they had a paid trip to Ibiza for having won the World Cup. “There I think he was already a little nervous and, of course, I was next to him and he fucked me all the time,” he noted. At that moment the soccer players were not aware until they saw the image of what was happening, realizing that “something more serious was happening and that what had happened was not something very normal.”
Already on the bus, Rubiales’ team ordered Hermoso to get off and the FEF press chief, Patricia Pérez, showed him a statement to stop the kiss controversy and “remove the issue.” “I said: ‘do what you want’,” revealed Hermoso, who also confessed that the text that was written in her name did not include any words spoken by her. Given this, the prosecutor insisted on whether she felt coerced, to which she replied yes: “she was feeling like she was forced to do something.”
Hermoso continued with her statement pointing out that on the plane Rubiales wanted to talk to her and asked her for help due to the controversy that arose. “I felt very uncomfortable,” she stressed, while saying that the now former federation leader demanded that the two of them appear in a video to settle the matter. Faced with her refusal, he insisted: “You have to do it for my two daughters who are crying,” he expressed according to the version of the player, who once again felt coerced by her superior. At that moment, a teammate of hers tells her that former coach Jorge Vilda is trying to contact her family so that they can convince her that she has to talk and downplay the importance of her kiss.
2023-10-09 22:08:56
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