It was rape
, according to the Spanish justice system: the Barcelona Court this Thursday sentenced the former Brazilian soccer player
Dani Alves
to four and a half years in prison because it considers that what happened in the bathroom of a club in Barcelona in the early hours of the 31st December 2022 between Alves and a 23-year-old girl was a sexual assault.
The judges considered the young woman's testimony valid
.
“The type of absence of consent is met, with the use of violence, and with carnal access,” they sentenced.
This was communicated by the court of section 21 of the Provincial Court of Barcelona this Thursday to the former Barça defender who has been in preventive detention for a year and a month in the Brians 2 penitentiary center, 38 kilometers from Barcelona.
“
For the existence of sexual assault, it is not necessary that physical injuries occur
nor that there be evidence of heroic opposition from the victim to having sexual relations,” they added.
And
they ruled out that the drunkenness
declared by Alves and some of his witnesses
was a mitigating factor
when evaluating how conscious the former soccer player was of his actions when he locked himself in the bathroom of the disco with the girl he had just met.
In custody: the van that transported the former soccer player.
Photo: EFE
The sentence, however, is not final
and can be appealed by the former player's defense and by the legal team representing the girl who reported him.
The Brazilian's lawyer, Inés Guardiola, confirmed this Thursday that she will appeal the court's decision.
“I continue to believe in the innocence of Mr. Alves,” Guardiola said that, during the trial, she had asked for the acquittal of his client.
If there were no modifications and the sentence was final, Dani Alves would be released in July 2027. Because the thirteen months that he has already been in preventive detention would have to be deducted from the sentence of four years and six months.
Inés Guardiola leaves the court after the sentence.Photo: REUTERS
The sentence also establishes that when he has finished serving his sentence, the former footballer will remain under supervised release for five years.
Regarding the young woman who reported him, Alves will not be able to get close to her - within a thousand meters - or have any type of contact with her for nine and a half years.
Regarding the compensation of 150 thousand euros requested by the defense of the attacked girl, the Brazilian had already deposited them in August of last year.
The court took this “repair of damage” into account when handing down the sentence.
The Prosecutor's Office requested 9 years in prison for Alves.
The defense of the young woman who reported him, 12.
“They won't believe me”
Alves was imprisoned on January 20, 2023
, when he appeared to testify at a Barcelona police station for a complaint of sexual assault.
A 23-year-old girl claimed that in the early hours of the last day of the year 2022, in a VIP bathroom at the Sutton nightclub, the former player had insulted, hit and sexually assaulted her.
The nightclub's security cameras had recorded them dancing and chatting in one of the booths
that Alves frequented at the club.
But he couldn't understand what happened when they both crossed a door behind which they were locked for 16 minutes.
The victim's lawyer, David Sáez.
Photo: EFE
Alves came out first and left the bowling alley with a friend.
The girl, who was with her cousin and a friend of hers, began to cry and was assisted by Sutton staff who immediately activated the protocol for alleged acts of sexual violence.
“They're not going to believe me,” the young woman repeated while she said that Alves had raped her
.
According to the testimony of her entourage and the club's employees, when they convinced her to file a complaint, the girl said, at first, that she was giving up compensation.
That she just wanted her attacker to be convicted.
She later changed her mind and received the 150 thousand euros that her lawyer claimed for the damages that the trauma caused her.
That morning in December 2022, the Catalan Police took genetic samples of semen in the bathroom and on the body of the young woman who was referred to the Cliníc hospital in Barcelona.
The twists and turns in Alves' statement and the trip that sent him to prison
In January of last year, the Brazilian had returned to Spain from Mexico, where he had a contract to play with the Pumas club, to attend his mother-in-law's funeral.
The Mossos d'Esquadra, the Catalan regional police, had been following his footsteps for weeks.
The complaint against him that the girl had made in the first days of January could have come to nothing if Alves did not return to Spain
.
Brazil, his country of origin, does not extradite its citizens even though they are accused of having committed crimes in other countries.
The press at the door of the court, after the sentence.
Photo: REUTERS
But Alves returned to Barcelona without any problem in January 2023. He was calm.
He had sent a video to a television channel stating that he had never seen the girl who denounced him in his life.
He showed up to give his version at the police station but was detained without bail.
Since then,
he changed - up to four times - his account
of himself and his defense attorney.
He ended up admitting that he had had sex with the young woman, by mutual consent.
His requests for conditional release were denied until the trial, which was held for three days at the beginning of February, and he paid compensation of 150 thousand euros.
In the thirteen months that Alves has been in prison,
the club he played for terminated his contract and he lost millions in advertising
and image rights that he had already agreed upon.
Other times: Dani Alves celebrates with his girlfriend Joana Sanz after winning the 2019 Copa América de Fútbol, at the Maracaná Stadium.
Photo: EFE
He turned 40 behind bars
and his second wife, the Canarian model Joana Sanz, first abandoned him and, months later, forgave him.
She was even one of the witnesses at the trial.
She declared that that morning, Alves returned home completely drunk, one of the mitigating factors in his defense to emphasize that what happened in Sutton's bathroom was the fault of drunkenness.
The law of only yes is yes
The “Alves case” is the first media trial that is carried out with the new law on sexual freedoms - known in Spain as the only yes in itself - in force.
This regulation considers consent, voluntary and free of pressure, essential so that sexual contact between two people is not a crime.
During the trial, Alves, who was the last to testify, stated: “
She started dancing close to me, rubbing her parts against mine
.”
And then she started, excuse her expression, to twerk and get more intimate.”
“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
.
"She said yes, I didn't have to insist at all," she said in her statement and even mimed what that sexual relationship would have been like for which, according to him, the two had agreed.
The ruling of the Barcelona court, however, states that "not only can consent be revoked at any time, but it
is also necessary that consent be given for each of the sexual varieties
within a sexual encounter and there is no evidence that At least as far as vaginal penetration is concerned, the complainant gave her consent, and not only that, but the accused also submitted the will of the victim with the use of violence.”
(FILES) New FC Barcelona's Brazilian defender Dani Alves, looks on during his presentation ceremony at the Camp Nou stadium in Barcelona on November 17, 2021. A Spanish court on February 22, 2024 sentenced former Brazil international Dani Alves to four and a half years in prison after finding him guilty of raping a young woman at a Barcelona nightclub in December 2022. (Photo by Pau BARRENA / AFP)
According to the ruling, "the accused abruptly grabbed the complainant, threw her to the ground and, preventing her from moving, penetrated her vaginally, even though the complainant said no, she wanted to leave."
Demoralized and alone
“Mr. Alves is whole
,” his defense lawyer said this Thursday.
However,
the Catalan press affirms that he no longer shares a cell in the prison's sexual abusers' wing
, that he is alone and depressed in a tiny room that he himself cleans daily.
During the trial, which Clarín covered from Barcelona, Alves spent the three days of the hearing in front of journalists, handcuffed and with his head bowed.
Alves in the trial that convicted him. Photo: AP
His mother, María Lucía Alves, and his brother traveled from Brazil to attend the three days in which almost 30 witnesses testified.
Before the trial, María Lucía had circulated images on social networks of the young woman who reported her son dancing with friends.
She revealed her name and questioned the consequences that the girl and her defense claim were left to her.
When could Dani Alves enjoy his first outings?
Although we will have to wait for the turn of the appeals, if the sentence that was announced this Thursday were final, Dani Alves could begin to be released from prison in July of next year.
By then he would have served a third of his sentence.
With a final sentence and good behavior, he could spend weekends at home in April 2025
.
It's what Alves wants most right now.
This was made known to Joana, his wife, in a letter that he sent her and that she, by mistake, made public for a few minutes on her Instagram account.
“Within my imperfection, I learned that I cannot dedicate my time to what was, but rather transform my energy into what is.
And what it is, is that you are what I dreamed of,” Alves wrote.
“What I dreamed of and what I continue to dream of.
I want to take all the paths with you.
I didn't have the wrong woman, yes, it was you.
There is not a single day, not a single moment, not a single plan in which you are not there,” she added.
“I pray every day for the day to come that I can see you wake up.
Nostalgia is not not being able to do it now,” the letter to Joana says.
And so it ends: “Wherever, whatever, whatever, but with you by my side always.
I feel bad feelings.
"Love you."