The lawyer of the model who has accused Cristiano Ronaldo of raping her has hit back claiming the allegations against the superstar are “not fake news.” Kathryn Mayorga, 34, claims the millionaire Juventus forward, 33, sexually assaulted her in a Las Vegas hotel room in 2009.
After bombshell court papers revealed the shocking allegations against the Portuguese athlete, he posted a video on Instagram claiming the accusations against him were “fake news.”
His accuser’s lawyer Leslie Stovall has responded to the footballer’s denials claiming her client wants to empower other women to take action against “wealthy, famous or powerful” men, reports CNN.
Model-turned teacher Mayorga took legal action in 2010 – reportedly receiving a settlement of £287,000 – over the alleged assault at the Palms Casino Resort suite a year earlier.
In a statement, Stovall said her client wanted to hold the footballer accountable and protect other women.
The lawyer also said that “fixers”, like the investigators allegedly used by Ronaldo to smear Mayorga’s name, enable sexual assault.
Mayorga hoped her case would encourage others to pursue charges against alleged attackers “no matter how wealthy, famous or powerful they may appear to be.”
Cristiano Ronaldo has strongly denied all the allegations in the court papers and the claims made by Mayorga in an interview with magazine Der Spiegel.
His lawyers have called the reporting in the German news outlet “blatantly illegal.”
On Friday, his legal team released a statement which read: “Following the current SPIEGEL reporting on our client Cristiano Ronaldo, we hereby declare the following: The reporting in SPIEGEL is blatantly illegal. It violates the personal rights of our client Cristiano Ronaldo in an exceptionally serious way.
“This is an inadmissible reporting of suspicions in the area of privacy. It would therefore already be unlawful to reproduce this reporting.
“We have been instructed to immediately assert all existing claims under press law against SPIEGEL, in particular compensation for moral damages in an amount corresponding to the gravity of the infringement, which is probably one of the most serious violations of personal rights in recent years.