"She was supposed to be invisible, damned to silence. … Her name is Kathryn." That's how this weekend's Der Spiegel article starts, and it's about Kathryn Mayorga, a 34-year-old American who filed a lawsuit Friday against Portuguese soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo, accusing him of raping her nearly a decade ago, per USA Today. In her complaint, Mayorga alleges the June 2009 assault took place in a Palms Casino Resort penthouse in Las Vegas, where she says Ronaldo, then 25, pulled her out of a bathroom and into a bedroom, asked for oral sex, then "turned [her] onto her side … while [she was] screaming 'no, no, no.'" "I ... curled up into a ball," she tells Der Spiegel. "That's when he jumped on me." She says he sodomized her, resulting in "severe emotional and bodily injuries including but not limited to anal contusions, post-traumatic stress disorder, and major depression," per the suit.
According to her complaint, Ronaldo said he was sorry after the attack and that "he was usually a gentleman," CNN reports. The suit says Mayorga reported the assault to the police that day and also went to the hospital, but that both cops and hospital staff told her Ronaldo and his camp would try to make her look like she was trying to turn a consensual sexual interaction into extortion. Mayorga's attorney says Ronaldo's team of "fixers" negotiated a $375,000 settlement with her that included a nondisclosure agreement. Ronaldo disputed the rape allegations in 2017, when Der Spiegel first reported on them, and in an Instagram Live video Friday, he pushed back more, saying, "What they said today, fake—fake news." His lawyer calls the Der Spiegel story, which lays out Mayorga's backstory and offers more details on what she says happened that night in 2009, "blatantly illegal." (More Cristiano Ronaldo stories.)
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