BARCELONA, 02/05/2024.- Former Brazilian FC Barcelona player Dani Alves, accused of raping a young woman in a bathroom at the Sutton nightclub in Barcelona in December 2022, sitting on the dock moments after it started the trial against him, with the processing of preliminary issues of accusations and defenses, this Monday at the Barcelona Court.
EFE/ Alberto Estévez / ***POOL***ALBERTO ESTÉVEZ (EFE)
Dani Alves defended his innocence this Wednesday in the trial for the rape of a 23-year-old girl at the Sutton nightclub in Barcelona.
In a statement lasting just 20 minutes, in which he answered only his lawyer's questions, the former FC Barcelona footballer assured that the relationship in the toilets of the VIP area was consensual and that the young woman at no time told him that stopped or wanted to leave.
—Did the complainant tell you that she did not want to have sex, did she push him away, did she make any gesture to indicate that she did not give her consent?—asked the lawyer, Inés Guardiola.
—No, at no time did he say anything to me.
We were both enjoying it there and that's it, nothing more.
Alves's account of what happened in Sutton's tiny bathroom differs completely from that of the victim.
The young woman has maintained, in all her statements, that she entered the bathroom without knowing where she was going, that Alves forced her to perform fellatio on him (which she resisted), that he then slapped her and insulted her ("say that you are my little whore ") and that, with great violence and against her will, he penetrated her vaginally until he ejaculated inside her.
The footballer has not only denied these extremes, but has spoken of a consensual sexual relationship in which the woman, always according to her statement, even took the initiative.
When the three girls (the victim, a friend and her cousin) went up to the VIP area after being invited by the waiter, Alves and the victim began to talk and dance.
While the victim maintains that she felt uncomfortable and that the soccer player initiated the approach, he maintains the opposite.
“They were not uncomfortable at all.
The complainant and I began to dance a little closer.
We spent a while interacting, having a good time.
She started rubbing her parts with mine, a typical disco dance.
She started to twerk, excuse the word, and we started to get intimate.”
In her statement, the victim claims that Alves held her hand on two occasions and placed it at the height of his penis.
He, on the other hand, has explained that it was she who started that sexual approach.
She “put her hand behind her and started touching my parts.”
“I thought there was a sexual attraction there,” said the accused, which is why he invited him to have sexual relations in Sutton's suite, a small adjoining room to which only the clients of table 6, where they were, have access. Alves and his friend Bruno.
The girl always agreed to it according to Alves, who declares as the accused and therefore has the right to lie.
Alves entered the bathroom and waited.
“I waited for a while, thinking that he wasn't going to come anymore, that he didn't want to come.
But when I open the door, I practically find her there.”
He made no gesture for her to come.
Opposite narrative
Alves's account of what happened in the bathroom, where there were no other witnesses or surveillance cameras, is diametrically opposed to that of the victim.
"We started kissing, I helped her take down my pants, I sat on the toilet bowl, she got on her knees in front of me and started giving me fellatio."
Afterwards, the girl straddled him and they had sex until he took it off on top of her when she was going to ejaculate so as not to do it in her vagina.
“I turned to cum out of her pussy and told her that she was returning to the booth, I didn't want them to see us together coming out of the bathroom.”
Using the chair from which he testified as if it were Sutton's toilet, Alves has reproduced some of the positions in which they were in the bathroom.
The lawyer has insisted on consent.
According to Alves, she never told him that she wanted to leave, nor did he stop her from leaving.
“At no time did she tell me anything that she didn't want.”
She has also denied that he slapped her, said obscenities to her or grabbed her by the hair and head.
“Not at all, I am not a violent man.”
When leaving the bathroom, she claims that she spent a while in the VIP area until she decided to leave.
In the exit hallway, she passed by the victim, her friend, and her first friend, but she claims she didn't see them.
At that moment, the girl was saying that she had been the victim of a sexual assault and, a few minutes later, she identified the perpetrator: Dani Alves.
Alves has been in provisional prison since January 20, 2023. That day, he was arrested and taken before the investigating judge, where he gave up to three different versions of what happened, as the evidence became clear to him: first he said that He did not know the victim, then he knew her but nothing happened and finally, he performed fellatio on her.
Later, in April, he admitted for the first time that he had penetrated her vaginally (the biological remains indicated this) but he said, like this Wednesday, that it was consensual sex.
Telephone 016 assists victims of sexist violence - all forms of violence, from physical to sexual, psychological or economic -, their families and their environment 24 hours a day, every day of the year, in 53 languages different.
The number is not registered on the telephone bill, but the call must be deleted from the device.
You can also contact them by email at
016-online@igualdad.gob.es
and by WhatsApp at 600 000 016. Minors can contact the ANAR Foundation by calling 900 20 20 10. If it is an emergency situation, You can call 112 or the National Police (091) and Civil Guard (062) telephone numbers.
And if you cannot call, you can use the ALERTCOPS application, from which an alert signal is sent to the Police with geolocation.
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