A Brazilian court has ordered that the footballer Robson de Souza,
Robinho
, 40, who played for Milan, Real Madrid and Santos, enter prison to serve the nine-year sentence imposed by Italy for the gang rape of a woman in Milan in 2013. The Superior Court of Justice decided this Wednesday in Brasilia, by nine votes to two, that the Italian sentence is valid in Brazil and therefore must be complied with.
Robinho, who did not attend the trial held years ago in Italy because he fled before taking the stand, has been free all this time and has taken refuge in his homeland because Brazil does not extradite its citizens.
But the Me Too phenomenon and the Dani Alves case have changed the perception here also about sexual abuse and impunity.
The Brazilian court has acted at the request of the Italian Government.
The victim, a woman who was celebrating her 22nd birthday that night in a nightclub, was raped, according to the sentence handed down in Milan, by Robinho and five friends.
They got her drunk until she was unconscious and sexually abused her in her cloakroom.
The Brazilian court has not gone into evaluating whether he committed the crime or not, it was about deciding whether the penalty is applicable in Brazil.
The ruling says yes.
The judges have also decided that the convicted person immediately enter prison.
The ruling of the Brazilian court occurred on the same day that Spanish judges have ordered that Alves, who has been imprisoned for 14 months, be provisionally released if he posts bail of one million euros.
He needs to raise the money.
The case has been widely followed in his country.
Alves saw his sentence reduced thanks to the fact that he compensated the victim with 150,000 euros that the father of his friend and also soccer player Neymar lent him because his assets are blocked.
Robinho made a video that he posted, on the eve of the hearing, on Instagram, where he has two million followers.
In a ten-minute recording, he proclaims his innocence and tells his version of what happened that night.
He says the sex was consensual and concludes that racism motivated her condemnation in Europe.
Along with him, a friend Siyo was tried and convicted.
The rest were never even identified.
Eleven years have passed since the gang rape.
The first sentence dates back to 2017 and was confirmed in 2020. In 2022, Robinho exhausted all resources in Italy.
Already then the victim's lawyer announced that they would ask him to fulfill it in Brazil.
The forward always insists on his innocence, but in 2020
Globo Esporte
published an audio that dismantled that version: “I laugh because I couldn't care less.
The woman was completely drunk, she doesn't even know what happened,” he stated in the recording, which was part of the summary.
That exclusive put an end to his sporting career by frustrating his signing for Santos, the club where he began his professional career.
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