Dani Alves
will know, possibly before the end of the month, what his sentence will be.
He has just witnessed three days of oral proceedings against him,
accused of having raped a 23-year-old girl
in the bathroom of a disco in Barcelona in the early hours of December 31, 2022. For this reason, he has been in custody for more than a year. preventive prison.
The Prosecutor's Office and the prosecution maintain their request for a sentence:
9 years is requested by the prosecutor
.
For the lawyer defending the complainant, there should be 12.
Alves' defense asked for acquittal.
Or a sentence of one year, for civil liability.
The former footballer was the last to testify at the trial
.
There he insisted that the sex he had with the young woman was by mutual consent, he cried and said that he is financially bankrupt.
Lawyer Ester García, who represents the victim, asked for 12 years in prison. Photo: EFE
“The world fell on me
,” said the former Barça defender in Spanish with a Portuguese accent in front of the court that, before the sentencing, must decide whether or not to grant him the provisional release requested by his defense lawyer until it is known. failure.
During the three days of the trial, almost thirty witnesses passed through the Barcelona Court where the public hearings were held.
The last one, on Wednesday, February 7, ended at ten at night.
From the statements and evidence presented by the Prosecutor's Office, the defense of the girl who denounced Alves and the lawyer defending the Brazilian, it is clear that it will not be easy for the court to make a decision.
The Alves case is the first media trial in Spain for a sexual crime that will be tried under the new sexual freedom law
.
The law, known as the “yes is yes law,” places consent at the center of the debate to evaluate whether sexual behavior is criminal or not.
But that “yes” that the law considers indispensable in all physical contact must also be explicit, clear and voluntary.
This is perhaps the most controversial aspect to elucidate.
“
She started dancing close to me, rubbing her parts against mine
.
And then she began, pardon her expression, to twerk and become more intimate,” Alves said in his statement.
“He put his hand on me and started touching my parts.
I thought there was sexual attraction
and I talked to her in case she wanted to go to the bathroom.
"He said yes, I didn't have to insist at all," said Alves in response to the questions of his defense lawyer, who pointed to two aspects in his strategy: verifying that
the former soccer player had drunk too much
that night and that he did not force him at any time. the will of the girl who reported him.
The lawyer Inés Guardiola, who defends Dani Alves.Photo: EFE
He even got Alves' wife, the model Joana Sanz, to testify, who said that her husband came home totally drunk that morning.
Tears and mimicry
Dani Alves, during his testimony, cried and did not spare a picture about the chair in which he was sitting, the position that, according to him, he adopted during the almost 20 minutes that he was locked in the bathroom with the young woman.
The girl, 24 years old, gave a statement on the first day of the trial
.
She did so separated by a screen from Alves, so as not to exchange a glance with the accused, and the recording that the audience makes as a normal procedure distorted her voice and pixelated her face.
The “law of only yes means yes” emphasizes that the victim's anonymity must be protected, although Alves's entourage released videos and the young woman's full name.
TOPSHOT - Brazilian footballer Dani Alves looks on at the start of his trial at the High Court of Justice of Catalonia in Barcelona, on February 5, 2024. Brazilian footballer Dani Alves, a former star at Barca and PSG, goes on trial in Barcelona accused of raping a woman in a local nightclub.
Prosecutors are asking for a nine-year prison sentence, followed by 10 years of conditional liberty.
They are also asking he pay 150,000 euros ($162,000) in compensation to the woman.
(Photo by Jordi BORRAS / POOL / AFP)
In her statement,
the girl again reported having been attacked, insulted, beaten and raped by the former soccer player
.
She admitted that she crossed the door that separates the bathroom from the booth where she was dancing with Alves and his companions without knowing what was on the other side.
And when she wanted to leave, the former player locked the door and abused her.
His version never changed
.
This was confirmed by her cousin and a friend of hers who were with her that night.
“He had a slimy attitude,”
they declared about Alves.
The nightclub staff, the Mossos d'Esquadra agents - the Catalan police -, the doctors and experts who treated her in the early hours of December 31, 2022 and in the hours after the attack that the young woman reported corroborated what that the complainant told.
According to the Catalan police
, the videos - recorded by them as soon as they were summoned by the nightclub like the images from the bowling alley cameras -
"completely" support what appears in the young woman's complaint
and which she repeated during the trial.
“The symptoms agreed with what the victim had reported,” said the doctors, forensics and psychologists who assisted the girl at the Hospital Cliníc in Barcelona in the early morning in which she reported Alves' attack.
They listed that, in the following months, he suffered from sleep disturbances, deterioration in his social ties, among others.
“In addition, he had symptoms of guilt and shame.
One of the indicators is the feeling of guilt,” they declared.
Joana Sanz, Alves's wife.
Photo: EFE
However, the psychiatrist presented by the former player's defense said that "an anxiety disorder was confused with post-traumatic stress disorder."
“In addition, they administered 0.25 milligrams of Tranquimazín, the lowest dose of this drug, when as a result of what he had experienced he should have had stronger medication,” he criticized.
Without traces of violence: the expertise that favors the footballer
Other forensic experts indicated that they found no signs of physical violence in the young woman.
Only a blow to a knee that had the appearance, according to the clinical view, of a scrape caused "by friction", alluding without putting it into words, the possible coming and going of a sexual relationship.
“There are no vaginal injuries,” they said.
“The physical and gynecological examination was done with the greatest detail and there is not a single ecchymosis (bruise) anywhere, although she said that she had done a lot of damage to her,” they added.
The result of the forensic examination's objective examination does not coincide with the victim's story, because neither injury nor irritation can be seen anywhere."
“There are no signs that there was violent intercourse.
It makes me think that the intercourse was not so traumatic,” declared another specialist presented by the defense of the former soccer player.
On Wednesday night, when he was being transferred in handcuffs from the courtroom to the cells of the Barcelona Court, his mother saw him pass and began to cry.
40 kilometers from the Sutton nightclub where he was a VIP client, Dani Alves awaits his sentence in the sex offenders' wing of the Brians 2 penitentiary centre.