Ex-Barcelona and Brazil defender Dani Alves has been sentenced to four years and six months in prison.
Glamtush reports that a Spanish court on Thursday found former Barcelona and Brazil footballer Dani Alves guilty of raping a woman in a Barcelona nightclub.
Alves, 40, has been handed a jail sentence of four years and six months.
The court found Alves sexually assaulted his victim early in the morning of December 31, 2022, when she said he raped her in a bathroom of an upscale Barcelona nightclub.
State prosecutors had sought a nine-year prison sentence for Alves while the lawyers representing his accuser wanted 12 years.
His defence asked for his acquittal, or if found guilty a one-year sentence plus 50,000 euros (£42,765) compensation for the victim.
In a statement, the court said there was evidence other than the victim’s testimony that proved that she had been raped.
Alves has been held in pre-trial detention since January 2023 and during the course of this month’s trial he has changed his testimony on a number of occasions.
He first denied knowing his accuser only to later claim he had met her in the toilet but that nothing had happened between them.
He then changed his version of events again, saying that they had had consensual sex. “We were both enjoying ourselves,” he alleged.
Prosecutors said Alves and his friend had bought champagne for three young women before asking one of them to accompany him to another area with a toilet which she had no knowledge of.
At that point they argued he turned violent, forcing the woman to have sex despite her repeated requests to leave.
His requests for bail were denied because the court considered him a flight risk. Brazil does not extradite its own citizens when they are sentenced in other countries.
The victim told state prosecutors she danced with Alves and willingly entered the nightclub bathroom, but that later when she wanted to leave he would not let her.
She said he slapped her, insulted her and forced her to have sexual relations against her will.
Alves modified his defence during the investigative phase while in custody, first denying any sexual contact with her before admitting to sexual relations that he said were consensual.
He said he had been trying to save his marriage by not admitting to the encounter initially.
During the trial, his defence focused on trying to show that Alves was drunk when he met the woman.
Alves won dozens of titles with elite clubs including Barcelona, Juventus and Paris Saint-Germain.
He played more than 400 times for Barcelona, winning six league titles and three Champions Leagues across two spells with the club. He was also part of Brazil’s 2022 World Cup squad.
He was with Mexican club Pumas when he was arrested. Pumas terminated his contract immediately.
The Alves case was the first high-profile sex crime since Spain overhauled its legislation in 2022 to make consent, or the lack thereof, central to defining a sex crime in response to an upswell of protests after a gang-rape case during the San Fermin bull-running festival in Pamplona in 2016.
