Soccer Superstar Cristiano Ronaldo Palms Casino Rape Case to Go to Trial in Nevada

Posted on: October 6, 2020, 08:28h. 

Last updated on: October 6, 2020, 09:36h.

Philip Conneller @casinoorgphilc Read More
Expertise: Gaming Business, Regulation, Tribal Gaming.

A judge in Nevada has declined to dismiss a rape claim against soccer superstar Cristiano Ronaldo and ordered that a trial date be set by December.

Cristiano Ronaldo
Cristiano Ronaldo may meet his accuser in court as a Nevada judge refused his motion to dismiss. (Image: Getty)

American Kathryn Mayorga brought the civil case against the Portugal and Juventus player in 2018, claiming she was raped by him at his penthouse suite at the Palms Casino, Las Vegas in 2009.

 

In 2010 she accepted $375,000 to drop any accusations against the player but claims she was coerced into this and was mentally unfit when she took the hush money.

 

Lawyers for Ronaldo sought to have the case dismissed on the grounds that Mayorga was of sound mind when she agreed to the settlement and could not demonstrate she lacked mental capacity.

 

Trial by December

 

But in court filings, Judge Jennifer Dorsey said, Mayorga provided written statements from both a psychiatrist and a therapist that said she did not have the legal ability to enter into a contract at the time she signed the settlement agreement.

 

Mayorga also provided a written statement from a therapist who treated her shortly after the alleged assault.

Because the proper venue for resolving Mayorga’s claims on their merits hinges on the mental-capacity issue, I deny without prejudice Ronaldo’s motion to dismiss them,” the judge said.

Mayorga’s lawsuit alleges battery, intentional infliction of emotional distress, coercion, fraud, and abuse of a vulnerable person.

She claims that the NDA she signed was designed to derail a police investigation into a criminal act and wants it nullified.

Mayorga initially reported the attack to police in 2009 but refused to identify a perpetrator because she feared negative publicity.

Football Leaks

Las Vegas Metro Police reopened the case in 2018 when German news magazine Der Spiegel reported on the NDA, after receiving the 2010 documents from the Football Leaks website. The article prompted Mayorga to come forward and sue.

According to documents filed last year, Ronaldo’s people paid Mayorga the money “in order to maintain the confidentiality of their dispute” and was not an admission of guilt, as the NDA clearly stated that the player disputed the allegation.

Meanwhile, documents passed to Der Spiegel in October 2018 in which a person claiming to be Ronaldo appears to indicate that what happened at the Palms in 2009 was not consensual, and was “stolen by hackers and falsified,” according to Ronaldo’s lawyer.

Ronaldo himself has called the allegations “fake news.”