Cristiano Ronaldo will not stand trial for a 2009 sexual assault allegation against him.
U.S. District Judge Jennifer Dorsey of Las Vegas dismissed a rape lawsuit Friday against the Portuguese soccer star, 37, due to the actions of his accuser Kathryn Mayorga’s attorney Leslie Mark Stovall. The judge said stolen and leaked documents detailing Ronaldo’s attorney-client discussions were used in their case.
“Stovall’s repeated use of stolen, privileged documents to prosecute this case has every indication of bad-faith conduct,” the judge said in the 42-page ruling.
“And because the record shows that he and Mayorga have extensively reviewed these documents and used them to fashion the very basis of Mayorga’s claims,” Dorsey continued. “Simply disqualifying Stovall will not purge the prejudice from their misuse.”
Ronaldo’s attorney Peter S. Christiansen stated, they are “pleased with the federal court’s careful consideration of the issues and decision to dismiss this case.”
“Since the Plaintiff first filed suit in 2018, we have maintained the action was brought in bad faith,” Christiansen adds in a statement. “The outright dismissal of Plaintiff’s case should give all who follow this matter renewed confidence in the judicial process in this country while dissuading those who seek to undermine it.
The documents were originally leaked by the website Football Leaks and published in the German newspaper Der Speigel in 2017. When Stovall began including them in his findings the court “found that defendant Cristiano Ronaldo had not waived privilege and struck them.”
“But Stovall remained undeterred, and when the defense learned that he planned to use some of those documents in depositions and believed he had even more than he’d disclosed, they filed a motion for case-terminating sanctions,” Dorsey added.
In addition to revealing Mayorga’s 2009 sexual assault allegations against Ronaldo, the documents also showed that she accepted a $375,000 civil settlement in exchange for not filing criminal charges.
“The article is nothing but a piece of journalistic fiction,” Ronaldo’s reps said in a statement to Der Speigel at the time.
The lawsuit, which was originally filed in Nevada’s Clark County District Court, sought to void the original settlement and secure an additional $200,000 in damages, arguing that Mayorga was coerced into signing a nondisclosure agreement.
Mayorga alleged that she went to a nightclub called Rain in the Palms Hotel on June 13, 2009, where Ronaldo invited her back to his penthouse suite, along with a group of people. She claimed that the athlete barged into the bathroom on her, where he “exposed his erect penis and asked the plaintiff to perform fellatio.”
She said that she refused and attempted to leave, but Ronaldo allegedly pulled her “onto a bed and attempted to engage in sexual intercourse,” claiming he sodomized her.
Mayorga will have the opportunity to appeal the judge’s decision with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.
