Alves appeals for consent to be released from prison: "The complainant is observed conduct typical of sexual flirtation in the courtship phase"

The Investigating Court number 15 of Barcelona rejected a week ago the request of the soccer player Dani Alves to be released from provisional prison where he has been held since the end of January accused of raping a 23-year-old woman in the toilets of the Sutton nightclub in Barcelona. The Brazilian's lawyers have filed an appeal against the judicial decision in which they maintain the line of defense that the relations were consented to, as Alves declared in his last appearance before the judge in what was his fourth different version.

Specifically, the appeal is based on the report of more than 200 pages provided by the lawyers to the procedure in which the security cameras and other images of the nightclub are analyzed at dawn on December 31 last when the relationship between the player and victim. For the defense, this report questions the victim's version both in the moments before he entered the bathroom with Alves and in the aftermath, so it can “distort” what “happened in the solitude of the couple in that tiny sink ” in which “two contradictory versions simply collide (the word of one against the other)”.

Thus, they accuse the victim of “many inconsistencies, inconsistencies and absolutely radical mendacity (from the roots), as is within reach of the pure dispassionate contrast of images and narrative of the preambular moments”. “The complainant builds a story that needed to weave an explanation of why an adult woman voluntarily enters a bathroom with an adult man. Once the abuse protocol was started by the Sutton nightclub, moreover without the decided impulse of the predicated victim, and rather dragged by a precipitation of events starting from a cry that does not necessarily derive from an inconsensual sexual act (we can think of thousand reasons other than the assault for a 23-year-old woman who has had sex with a 40-year-old man in a bathroom to burst into tears), the complainant flees forward and is forced to script a story of alteration of her will, because tries to justify why and for what purpose she enters a bathroom with a man,” says the resource.

Thus, they emphasize that the images do not match the statement of the victim who in court claimed to feel “afraid” since “by not going to talk to him he could put something in the drink for both my friends and me. And what scared me the most at this moment was that when I left or when I left this area that he could take me in his car, I put myself in the worst movie of all, without thinking about what had happened to me.. I remember that I went because I felt very intimidated, very harassed”. In this sense, they point out that in “the 20 long minutes in which the group interacts before the couple goes to the bathroom and which are far from revealing a microcosm of panic, terror and nullifying domination of the will and rather show two adults developing a erotic game of seduction before a coitus”.

In addition, Alves' defense indicates in his appeal that in the images “an openly sexualized conduct is observed in the complainant, typical of a sexual courtship phase. It is not necessary that we go into its detailed description. Certain body movements of the complainant are conclusive. Nothing comparable to a fear of environmental intimidation, nor anything that allows one to think that whoever behaves in this way has their will and consents altered by fear”. They insist that before entering the bathroom there was “a particularly intense physical approach between them with highly sexualized movements on the part of the complainant.”

The defense maintains that Alves entered the bathroom and two minutes later she went, although she was talking to her friends and a waiter beforehand.. That is why they believe that “if at any time she felt bewilderment and restlessness, for 2 minutes she had her trusted friends to get rid of that change in mood. Rather, it seems that they decide by mutual agreement and that she “consulted” with her friends about the convenience of locking herself in the bathroom.”. Despite this, the private prosecution, which represents the victim, points out that that period of time did not elapse and that she did not know where the door to which the player invited her to enter led.

For Alves' lawyers, the two flirted in the private room of the nightclub “normally and everything indicates that they agreed to continue that burst of lust in the bathroom.”. The appeal also questions the statement of the victim's friends and the numerous evidence, such as the medical report or the fingerprints found in the sink, provided to the procedure, considering that they “corroborate” that the relationship was consensual.

He also rejects that there is a risk of flight since the player has “his life project in Barcelona, the family always wanted their children to receive a university education in Spain. The terrible family situation they are now experiencing has not altered that project”. Thus they insist that the two “have been registered in the family home” of Esplugues de Llobregat. They also recall that Alves came from Mexico to testify of his own free will and that it is false that he has initiated divorce proceedings with his wife Joana Sanz, as this medium has been able to corroborate.