The Spanish court that tried Dani Alves concluded that the Brazilian soccer player “suddenly 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.”
He was sentenced to four and a half years in prison, plus five years of supervised release.
The complainant is a 23-year-old girl who claimed that in the early hours of December 31, 2022,
the footballer raped her in the bathroom of a booth at the
Sutton nightclub in Barcelona.
Alves changed her versions, and went from
denying everything
to ensuring that she consented to the relationship and even saying that she did not remember anything about how drunk she was.
“For the existence of sexual assault, it is not necessary that physical injuries occur, nor that there be evidence
of heroic opposition by the victim
to having sexual relations,” the judges wrote in the ruling.
And something key:
"It should be noted that neither the fact that the complainant has danced in a suggestive manner, nor that she has brought her buttocks closer to the accused, or that she has even been able to hug the accused, can lead us to assume that she gave her consent to everything that may subsequently occur. "
.
They were all the things that Alves said he did to the young woman to imply that she practically forced him to rape her.
"These attitudes or
even the existence of insinuations do not mean giving carte blanche to any abuse or aggression
that occurs subsequently:
consent in sexual relations
must always be given before and even during the practice of sex, in the way that a person can. to agree to maintain relationships to a certain extent and not show consent to continue, or not to carry out certain sexual behaviors," the court explained.
In Spain, the so-called "Only Yes is Yes" Law has existed since 2022, which establishes that
there is no consent
if a person does not say yes explicitly.
Consent cannot be inferred from silence or lack of resistance.
That argument was the one used by defendants and even judges to give low sentences (in the first instance) to the members of the so-called "manada", the group of five men who on July 6, 2016 - during the Sanfermin celebration - raped an 18 year old girl.
They locked her in a house, stripped her naked, threw her on the floor, penetrated her from all sides and even recorded her.
They alleged that she did not defend herself.