Cristiano Ronaldo Accused of Rape in Las Vegas Lawsuit

Soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo is being accused of rape in a new lawsuit filed by a woman from Las Vegas, Nevada.

According to Us Weekly, 33-year-old Kathryn Mayorga alleges that in June 2009 Ronaldo assaulted her in his hotel suite at the Palms Casino Resort in Las Vegas.

Her allegations cite that she was in the bathroom changing her clothes and Ronaldo came to her and exposed himself while asking her to perform a sex act on him.

Mayorga goes on allege that after she refused his advances, the Portuguese footballer forced her into the bedroom and raped her as she yelled for him to stop.

In her lawsuit, Mayorga states that she did go to local authorities that same day, but did not name her alleged attacker until several weeks later after numerous police interviews.

Finally, she also alleges that Ronaldo used a team of “personal reputation protection specialists” to keep tabs on her and intimidate her by threatening to claim that she consented to sex with the soccer player.

Ronaldo has since denied the allegations against him through a representative, calling them “untruthful and false.”

News of the lawsuit emerged just one week after Der Spiegel — a German sports magazine — published a story regarding the accusations

Following Ronaldo’s denial of the accusations — in which his rep called the story “journalistic fiction” — Der Spiegel editor Christoph Winterbach took to Twitter to defend his outlet’s reporting in a lengthy tweet-thread.

“We had hundreds of documents from different sources: e-mails, medical and police reports,” Winterbach stated in one tweet. “We put the story together: In 2009, Mayorga accused Ronaldo of rape. She said she was too afraid to say his name to the police & to go to court b/c she feared harassment by [Ronaldo’s] fans.”

“We worked for weeks on that story last year, travelled to Las Vegas, tried to talk to Mayorga (she wouldn’t talk), confronted Ronaldo (he denied), published three articles,” the editor continued. “After the first text, [Ronaldo’s] agency Gestifute published a troubling statement.”

Us Weekly reports that they reached out to lawyers from both Ronaldo and Mayorga but had not yet heard back at the time of this writing.