BARCELONA, Spain — Dani Alves, one of the most successful soccer players of his generation, was found guilty of raping a woman in a Barcelona nightclub and sentenced to four years and six months in prison on Thursday.
Besides disgracing the former Brazil and Barcelona right back, the conviction was applauded in Spain as a victory for a pioneering sexual liberty law that emphasizes the lack of consent of the victim as key to determining sex crimes.
A three-judge panel at the Barcelona Provincial Court convicted the 40-year-old Alves of sexual assault for the incident on Dec. 31, 2022.
The court ordered Alves to pay 150,000 euros ($162,000) in compensation to the victim, banned him from approaching the victim’s home or place of work, and from communicating with her by any means for nine years.
Alves was in the courthouse to hear the verdict and sentence, and his lawyer, Inés Guardiola, said he was “calm and collected.”
David Sáenz, a member of the victim’s legal team, said, “We are satisfied because this verdict recognizes what we have always known, that the victim told the truth and that she has suffered.”
The victim’s lawyer, Ester García, said on Wednesday she and her client would not be present for the verdict.
Victim’s attorneys wanted a longer sentence
The victim said Alves raped her in the bathroom of a Barcelona nightclub on the morning of Dec. 31, 2022. The court considered it proven that the victim did not consent to sex and there was evidence, in addition to the defendant’s testimony, that she was raped.
Alves denied during the three-day trial this month that he raped the woman, testifying to the court “I am not that kind of man.”
State prosecutors had sought a nine-year prison sentence for Alves while the lawyers representing his accuser wanted 12 years. His defense asked for his acquittal, or if found guilty a one-year sentence plus 50,000 euros compensation for the victim.
The sentence of four years and six months is near the lowest sentence for a rape conviction, which when the rape took place was penalized by four to 12 years under Spanish law. That has since been modified to six to 12 years. The court in its sentence said it considered favorably for Alves that he had “before the trial paid the court 150,000 euros to be given to the victim without any conditions attached.”
Sáenz said his legal team did not agree with the application of the extenuating circumstance, saying the money did not compensate the harm done to their client. During the trial, medical experts testified she was suffering from post-traumatic trauma.
“Clearly (it does not compensate), but that is what the court decided,” Sáenz said. “We have to examine the sentence to see if its contents are adequate for his acts.”
The state prosecutor’s office said it will study the verdict and consider whether to appeal.
Spain Deputy Prime Minister Yolanda Díaz said she hoped the verdict “serves as an exemplary measure for all the sexist behaviors that women suffer in all areas of our lives.”
Consent was central to case
The Alves case was the first high-profile sex crime since Spain overhauled its legislation in 2022 to make consent 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.
The legislation popularly known as the “only yes means yes” law defines consent as an explicit expression of a person’s will, making it clear that silence or passivity do not equal consent. The law, however, initially led to reduced sentences for hundreds of sex offenders because it set up lower minimum sentences, like the one applied to Alves, before being reformed.
Irene Montero, the former equality minister who championed the “only yes means yes” law, welcomed the ruling.
“The sentence against Dani Alves clearly establishes that he committed sexual assault because the victim did not consent. It is the result of the feminist fight for the right to sexual freedom and for putting consent at the center,” she wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
Guardiola based her defense during the trial on video from the nightclub security cameras that she said showed how the woman danced “with sexualized movements” that “showed her interest” in Alves before the alleged assault.
García, the victim’s lawyer, said at the close of the trial that the new law made it irrelevant how her client may have behaved with Alves beforehand.
“I don’t care (how she was dancing), when she said ‘No’, that meant ‘No.’ That is why the law was changed,” García said. “The debate is no longer whether the victim put up resistance.”
Shattered legacy
Alves has been in jail since being detained on Jan. 20, 2023. His requests for bail were…
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