The model accusing Cristiano Ronaldo of raping her in a Las Vegas hotel room says he hired a team of professionals to discredit her after the alleged attack.
Kathryn Mayorga, now 34, accuses the football star of using a team of ‘reputation protection specialists’ to frustrate a criminal investigation and smear her name after she accused him of rape in 2009.
Included in the team was a private detective who dug into Mayorga’s past and tailed her around Vegas to see what she was getting up to, she says.
In the meantime his lawyers were seeking assurances from the police that the investigation was being treated as low priority while hammering out a £288,000 deal to buy her silence, court papers allege.
The story was first reported by German magazine Der Speigel last week and subsequently disparaged by Ronaldo’s lawyers as ‘probably one of the most serious violations of personal rights in recent years.’
Christian Schertz, attorney for the sports star, said Spiegel’s reporting was “blatantly illegal” and added that he has been instructed to sue for “moral damages.”
Ronaldo personally denied the claims in an Instagram video, calling them “fake, fake news” before adding: “I am a happy man and all good.”
In the past, lawyers for Ronaldo have vociferously denied the allegations.
Detailing what she says were Ronaldo’s attempts to rubbish her account, Mayorga told Der Speigel of one occasion after the alleged attack when she was out with friends and they noticed a man sitting a short distance away.
“There was an investigator looking at us and writing notes down,” she said.
“We were laughing, like: “Could you make it obvious!” He was just looking at us and writing.”
The magazine also purports to be in possession of leaked documents from 2009/10 showing the level of detail the investigator went into during his probe.
In one entry carried by Speigel, the investigator describes in intimate detail how she left her house, drove to the MGM Grand hotel, met a friend whom she hugged in the elevator, then drank three glasses of red wine as they chatted.
The investigator also dug up her felony record for parking tickets, details from her resume, and spent hours following her including sitting outside her house, according to the report.
Mayorga’s father, a retired firefighter named Larry, recalled being so afraid for her safety that he took her to a gym to teach her self-defense.
“Working out, (teaching) her how to punch, stuff like that,” he said.
It seems the team were hoping to catch Mayorga partying – ideally in the company of men – contradicting her account that the alleged attack left her emotionally scarred.
But the investigation appears to have come up short. At one point, according to Der Spiegel, one of Ronaldo’s lawyer even suggested hiring a second private eye, though it is not clear if this happened.
Meanwhile, the team were also seeking information from the Las Vegas police about how they were handling the case, according to court papers Mayorga filed last week.
Using a ‘confidential source’ within the LVMPD, the team allegedly established that cops were not treating the attack as a ‘violent crime’ – despite Mayorga saying she suffered anal injuries which were documented as part of a ‘rape kit’ exam.
Officers said they would class the crime as ‘harassment’, would put the case on the ‘back burner’ and would ‘happily’ drop it if a financial settlement could be reached, the papers allege.
Having established that Mayorga was vulnerable, the team then threatened to publicly smear her as a consenting sexual partner who was trying to extort Ronaldo because of his wealth and fame, the court filing says.
These warnings were echoed by medical staff who examined Mayorga after the attack and the first police officer who interviewed her, she claims.
This amounted to a ‘conspiracy to obstruct the criminal investigation and prosecution of Ronaldo for sexual assault… and interfere, reduce or eliminate plaintiff’s claim for civil damages,’ the papers say.
Mayorga was born in Las Vegas as the daughter of a fireman and stay-at-home mum, and enjoyed a middle-class upbringing. (www.dailymail.co.uk)
