Las Vegas police have confirmed they have reopened an investigation stemming from a 2009 complaint involving a woman who claims she was raped by Cristiano Ronaldo.
Kathryn Mayorga says the former Real Madrid and Manchester United star forced her to have sex with him at a Las Vegas hotel in 2009. The 34-year-old says she later reached an out-of-court settlement with the footballer, in which she agreed to keep her allegations private. Her lawyers say that Ronaldo did not fulfill one of the terms of the settlement, and the agreement was therefore void. In an interview with Der Spiegel magazine, Mayorga said she had gone public with her allegations in the wake of the #MeToo movement.
On Tuesday, Las Vegas Police Department confirmed it had reopened an investigation into a claim of rape by Mayorga but said that she had not named a suspect at the time.
“The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department responded to a call of a sexual assault on 13 June 2009,” the department wrote in an email to the Guardian. “At the time the report was taken, the victim did not provide detectives with the location of the incident or suspect description. A medical exam was conducted.
“As of September 2018, the case has been reopened and our detectives are following up on information being provided by the victim. This is an ongoing investigation and no further details will be released at this time.”
Mayorga said she had initially agreed to kiss Ronaldo so that he would leave her alone but he eventually forced her into sex. “After he assaulted me, he wouldn’t let me leave again. He wouldn’t let me leave,” Mayorga told Der Spiegel.
Ronaldo has denied Mayorga’s allegations. The footballer’s lawyer, Christian Schertz, said the Spiegel report “is manifestly illegal and violates the personal rights of our client Cristiano Ronaldo in an extremely serious way” and is “one of the most serious violations of personal rights in recent years”.
