-OpEd-
Brazilian former soccer player Dani Alves was sentenced last year to four-and-a-half years in prison after a court found him guilty of raping a young woman in a Barcelona nightclub in 2022. As the BBC reported, citing the accuser’s testimony, she had entered a bathroom cubicle with the FC Barcelona star voluntarily, but had changed her mind before being prevented from leaving. She stated he then forced her to engage in oral sex, and beat her before penetrating her forcefully. Alves, now 41, was also ordered to pay the victim 150,000 euros in compensation, but later released on bail while appealing the conviction after putting up a 1-million-euro bail.
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An appeals court last week in Spain’s Catalonia region has now quashed the original conviction on the grounds of inconsistencies in the victim’s testimony that violated, in strictly juridical terms, Alves’s right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond any reasonable doubt.
The ruling, it found, had been based on “gaps, inaccuracies, inconsistencies and contradictions regarding the facts, the legal assessment and their consequences,” though it observed the new ruling was not to be understood as a confirmation of Alves’s version of events.
During the appeal, the victim’s attorneys had even asked the second court to raise his jail sentence to 12 years, while prosecutors were asking for nine instead of four and a half years.
Regardless of the proviso, the new sentence is in practical terms a major setback for all those who have sought to take legal action in a case of sexual aggression. For the appeals court, the DNA test that showed sexual abuse had “very probably” occurred was considered insufficient.
Accumulation of evidence
It also was not convinced by the testimonies of the victim’s cousin and a friend, video footage from the nightclub and forensic evidence as confirmations of her statements in court. She was shown to be suffering from post-traumatic stress after the incident, though the new ruling will likely prolong the case another 18 months or longer.
Questioning a woman for dancing in a nightclub before a sexual attack is a conversation we shouldn’t be having
If this accumulation of evidence is not enough, what must an accuser show to get her attacker convicted? The court rightly pointed out there were contradictions in the victim’s account, but these were also in Alves’s account, including initially claiming he did not know the accuser, in spite of camera footage showing them dancing at the club before the incident.
The victim’s attorney, Ester García, said the new ruling “overrules the reading of the sentence by the first court, but does not engage in evaluating all the evidence, which is what a secondary court should do.” She added, “questioning a woman because she might have been dancing in a nightclub before a sexual attack is a conversation we shouldn’t be having in the 21st century.”
Specter of La Manada
The new ruling has taken us back to the days of the judge who doubted the victim’s testimony in the 2016 “La Manada” (pack) case in northern Spain, because the plaintiff had taken a holiday after the group aggression against her.
It is also of particular gravity for the message it sends to all sexual violence victims in Spain. If testimonies, tests and even footage are not enough to corroborate an accusation, what are they left with?
The initial ruling in the Alves case was the first sentence that suggested the law would even envisage reparations for victims. The new ruling has taken us back to the limbo wherein we can keep asking ourselves: is patriarchal justice even capable of legally protecting the lives of women?
