Sunday, February 11, 2024, 00:07
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Dani Alves faces a possible conviction for alleged sexual assault. This week, he has sat on the bench. Before the ruling is known, the court must immediately rule on the request from the defense of the former Barça, Sevilla, PSG and Brazil footballer so that he can be released provisionally. This decision will already give some clues about the meaning of the sentence.
1. Prison sentences
The Prosecutor’s Office requests 9 years in prison for the exlateral, while the accusation filed by the victim’s lawyer raises the demand to 12 years, the maximum penalty for sexual assault. The Brazilian’s defense demands his acquittal. Alves has been in preventive detention since January 20, 2023.
2. When the sentence
There is no fixed deadline, but it is estimated that the court could have the ruling ready between fifteen days and two months. Everything points to conviction, but in cases of sexual assault there is always room for interpretation for judges. The parties negotiated an out-of-court agreement but did not reach an agreement. Judicial sources indicate that the athlete was only willing to accept a two-year sentence.
3. The protagonists of the trial
It has been a trial with a marked feminine accent. Except for the accused, all the other protagonists have been women: the victim, the president of the court, the prosecutor, the girl’s lawyer and the defense lawyer. The court is made up of three people: two men and one woman.
4. Alves’ attitude
The press has been able to follow the trial through a television screen, from inside the Barcelona courthouse. Journalists were prohibited from entering the hearing room. But they could see the former soccer player in the hallways: when he arrived and when he was taken to the cells during breaks. Two police officers took him handcuffed into the room. When asked what he expected from the trial, on three occasions, he shrugged his shoulders and made an ‘I don’t know’ gesture with his face, with the cockiness of a professional footballer. He appeared very thin and dressed casually, not like when he was a shining star, who showed off expensive and flashy suits. He only answered his lawyer, which is usually interpreted as a gesture to minimize risks, and he starred in one of the trial scenes, embarrassing and in very bad taste for many of those present. He simulated, in the chair where he was sitting, the position he was in when the young woman performed fellatio on him, voluntary according to him, forced according to her. He cried not when recounting the events, but when he recounted the moment he found out that he was accused. He said the cause has ruined him.
The keys
Assault
The victim claims that he raped her, grabbed her hair, threw her to the ground and hit her. She said to stop and she didn’t.
Alves
The former Barça and Sevilla footballer talks about consensual sex and that the two “enjoyed”
Nightclub
The events occurred in the toilets of the private room of the Sutton nightclub in Barcelona on 12-30-22.
5. Factors in favor of the victim
Since the beginning, Alves has changed his version five times, so he loses credibility. He claims it was consensual sex. The victim has always maintained the same thesis: that she was raped and beaten. The testimony of the police officers who treated the girl reinforces her story. Also that of the two friends of hers who accompanied her. The arguments of the prosecutor and the victim’s lawyer were very forceful. The prosecutor insisted that the accused has no credibility. She emphasized that there was no consent during the quarter of an hour in which Alves and the girl were in that bathroom without anyone seeing them or any camera being able to record it. “He feels unpunished,” she summarized. Ester García, the victim’s lawyer, was equally forceful: “I don’t care if she was twerking or that she was giving him the buttocks, when she said ‘no’ it’s ‘no’. And precisely for that reason the law was changed. The rule of ‘only yes means yes’ can be key.
6. The defendant’s assets
Her lawyer, Inés Guardiola, has tried to sow doubts about the girl’s credibility. The complainant stated that they were uncomfortable in the booth. Alves, on the other hand, stated that they were having a good time, dancing close together and “twerking.” “He could have later revoked that consent, but he did not do so,” said the defense lawyer. “We were both enjoying ourselves,” the defendant noted in his statement. The lawyer even let it be known that the victim and her friends, after leaving the bathroom where she was allegedly raped, had a plan to make some kind of profit from the situation. The defense lawyer described the young woman’s statement as “full of contradictions and does not conform to reality.” «His version of it does not meet the requirements to be considered as evidence for the prosecution. It lacks confirmation and is contrary to documentary evidence and witness statements. “It lacks verisimilitude,” she said. She also said that he was drunk, as a mitigating factor in case there is a conviction.
7. Decisive testimonials
Nearly thirty testimonies appeared at the trial, including witnesses, experts and forensic experts. There were key statements. Like that of the director of Sutton or that of a worker, who recounts a conversation between the victim and her friends: “I already knew what I was going for, but then I regretted it and I couldn’t leave.” The police officer who was carrying a camera and the first person who attended her described the state of horror and shock in which she found herself. She did not want to report for fear that they would not believe her and she said that she had hurt her a lot. Doctors from the Barcelona Clinic who treated him assured that it is common that in cases of sexual assault there are no vaginal injuries in the victims as occurred in this case.
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2024-02-10 23:07:10
#Alves #keys #sexual #assault #trial
