Court Denies Woman’s Attempt To Reopen Rape Case Against Cristiano Ronaldo

A U.S. appeals court ruled in favor of Cristiano Ronaldo, rejecting an appeal by the lawyer for Kathryn Mayorga to reopen a case alleging the soccer player of raping her in 2009.

The case was dismissed in Las Vegas in June 2022 after Mayorga filed in 2018. Her lawyer argued that U.S. District Judge Jennifer Dorsey should not have rejected Mayorga’s attempt to publicly unseal the confidentiality agreement she signed in 2010 to accept payments from Ronaldo.

An appellate court in San Francisco disagreed with Mayorga. It rejected another argument that Dorsey abused her discretion by dismissing the case with prejudice and refusing to let Mayorga refile. The three judges also levied a $335,000 fine against her lawyer, Leslie Mark Stovall.

“The district court clearly recognized the gravity of dismissing the case and accordingly provided a thorough analysis, amply supported by factual findings,” wrote Judge Johnnie Rawlinson in a six-page opinion.

The sanction against Stovall deemed that he acted in “bad faith” after attempting to use documents that were leaked in a cyberattack in order to reopen Mayorga’s case.

The ruling on Tuesday noted that the 2010 settlement “lay dormant until 2017, when… ‘Football Leaks’ released hundreds of documents through a cyber hack of Ronaldo’s former attorneys.”

“Despite the settlement and confidentiality agreement between Ronaldo and Mayorga, Stovall sought and used documents from ‘Football Leaks’— including those clearly marked attorney-client privilege — to prosecute a new lawsuit on behalf of Mayorga against Ronaldo,” the circuit court said.

Mayorga was 25 when she met Ronaldo at a nightclub in 2009, after which she went with him and some other people to his hotel suite. According to her lawsuit— which she filed almost a decade later in 2018 — it was there that the soccer star sexually assaulted her.

Ronaldo has denied the allegations against him, claiming that their relationship was consensual and that the confidentiality agreement reached in 2010 was valid after Mayorga accused him of conspiracy and breach of contract.

The court decided that Dorsey “properly held that Ronaldo did not wave or otherwise forfeit his claim of attorney-client privilege as to the ‘Football Leaks’ documents.”

Last year, Ronaldo and partner Georgina Rodriguez jointly announced they had lost their baby son. “It is the greatest pain that any parent can feel. Only the birth of our baby girl gives us the strength to live in this moment with some hope and happiness,” they said in part. “Our baby boy, you are our angel. We will always love you.”