The Economic Times is reporting that the lawyers for Cristiano Ronaldo plan the sue German magazine Der Spiegel which published accusations by an American woman who alleges she was raped by the footballer.
The German magazine said the rape allegedly took place in June 2009 in a hotel room in Las Vegas, according to Leslie Mark Stovall, the lawyer for the alleged victim, Kathryn Mayorga.
Ronaldo and Mayorga reportedly reached an out-of-court agreement, and according to Stovall, Ronaldo paid her $375,000.
Mayorga’s lawyer told the German paper that he had filed a civil complaint seeking to declare the non-disclosure agreement void. His reason is: “The purpose of this lawsuit is to hold Cristiano Ronaldo responsible within a civil court of law for the injuries he has caused Kathryn Mayorga and the consequences of those injuries.”
Ronaldo’s camp apparently is very upset with the publication, which is why his lawyers are threatening to sue. And in a statement published by ET, his lawyer Christian Schertz said the report was “an inadmissible reporting of suspicions in the area of privacy”, and that he would seek legal redress for his client from the magazine.
Schertz added that he would seek compensation from Der Spiegel for “moral damages in an amount corresponding to the gravity of the infringement, which is probably one of the most serious violations of personal rights in recent years.”
Reacting to this update, the magazine’s Deputy Editor-in-Chief, Alfred Weinzierl, told Reuters that Der Spiegel had repeatedly written to Ronaldo’s management and lawyers about the allegations before publishing its report. “We sent written questions, to which there were no answers. Nobody sued us in connection with earlier Ronaldo reports,” he said in an email.
The alleged rape victim also told Der Spiegel she no longer felt bound by the non-disclosure agreement as she suffers from the consequences of the night nine years ago. “I’ve had like these serious breakdowns,” she told the magazine. “And again, blaming of the rape. And I blame him, and I blame myself for signing that thing.”