Cristiano Ronaldo on Tuesday denied rape allegations levelled against him, saying his conscience was clear and that he would calmly await the results of any investigation.
“I firmly deny the accusations being issued against me. Rape is an abominable crime that goes against everything that I am and believe in,” the world-famous athlete wrote in a tweet.
His agents Gestifute also sent the same statement by Ronaldo in an email to Reuters.
“Keen as I may be to clear my name, I refuse to feed the media spectacle created by people seeking to promote themselves at my expense. My clear conscience will thereby allow me to await with tranquillity the results of any and all investigations.”
Kathryn Mayorga, who sued Ronaldo in a district court in Clark County, Nevada on Thursday, is seeking to void a $375,000 settlement she alleges she was coerced into signing to keep quiet, according to Mayorga's lawyer.
The lawsuit, which seeks more than $200,000 in damages, names as defendants Ronaldo and an unnamed team of fixers described as “personal reputation protection specialists” hired to make the situation go away.
Mayorga said the Portuguese footballer, who now plays for Italian club Juventus, raped her in a Las Vegas hotel room in 2009 while she repeatedly screamed no, according to a lawsuit filed Friday in Clark County, Nevada.
Mayorga claims she refused to get into his hot tub because she did not want to ruin her dress, then Ronaldo offered her some athletic shorts and a T-shirt and pointed her towards a bathroom where she could change.
The court documents state that as she was changing, Ronaldo entered the bathroom, exposed himself and asked her to perform a sex act.
The ex-Manchester United player spoke out in a video on Instagram just hours after Mayorga's lawyer filed court documents about the case. Grinning into the camera, he said: ‘No, no, no, no, no. What they said today? Fake, fake news.’
“They want to promote [themselves by using] my name. It's normal. They want to be famous to say my name, but it is part of the job. I am a happy man and all good.”
Lawyers for Ronaldo, one of the world's best-known athletes, on Friday threatened to sue German magazine Der Spiegel that published “blatantly illegal” accusations by Mayorga.
Der Spiegel's deputy editor-in-chief, Alfred Weinzierl, said the magazine had worked professionally, confronted and laid out the evidence and stood by its story, which it said was allowed under Germany's press law.
The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police on Monday said an incident report with the number listed in Mayorga's lawsuit was filed on the night of the alleged attack, and said the case was reopened last month. They declined to say whether the athlete was the subject of an investigation.
There was no immediate comment from police on Ronaldo's statement.
Ronaldo has been named Player of the year five times and transferred to Juventus from Real Madrid this summer for 100 million euros.
On Tuesday, the Juventus star watched his team play as he prepared to fight the allegations. The 33-year-old was accompanied by his girlfriend Georgina Rodriguez, 23, and his seven-year-old son Cristiano.
