Robinho: “The mistake was not having been faithful to my wife”

Brazilian striker Robinho again denied the abuses allegedly committed by him -it was sentenced in Italy to nine years in prison for sexual violence- and claimed that his “crime” was “not being faithful” to his wife, in an interview published this Saturday by the UOL Esporte portal.

“The mistake was not having been faithful to my wife, I did not make any mistake of raping someone, abusing a girl or going out with her without her consent,” said the footballer, a day after his signing with the Brazilian Santos was rescinded due to pressure from the sentence handed down by the Italian Justice.

Robinho and a friend of his, Ricardo Falco, they were convicted in the first instance by a court in Milan for allegedly participating in a gang rape against a young woman of Albanian origin, then 23 years old, in 2013, during a party in a nightclub in the Italian city.

The soccer player, surrounded by several lawyers and representatives who interrupted the interview repeatedly, He admitted that he had “consensual” intimate contact with the young woman, but that he did not have “sexual relations” with her. “I did not have a sexual relationship with her. We had a relationship between a man and a woman, relationships that men have with women, but there was no sexual relationship, no penetration, none of that,” he said.

Robinho He said that he and the young woman began to “have contact with the consent” of both, they touched for “a few minutes” and, immediately, the player went home alonewhile the girl stayed at the disco with her friends.

“My friends told me the next day that, with the consent of the girl, they hooked up with her, they related sexually because she wanted to. And that they left the disco with the same girl and went to another disco,” he said. “I am defending myself. The boys, if they did something with her, I cannot speak for them. I know what I did with her and with her consent,” he insisted.

Asked about the telephone punctures leaked the day before by the ‘GloboEsporte’ portal, which appear transcribed in the Italian Justice ruling, Robinho criticized the “lack of context” of the dialogues, but was interrupted by his representatives, who directed him not to comment on conversations.

“I would like to tell, but that might hurt me. I trust the Italian Justice. I can’t answer you exactly, but sure, without a doubt, there is much that came out of context“he replied.

In one of the leaked dialogues, the musician Jairo Chagas, who performed at the disco on the night of the events, expressed to Robinho his concern about the progress of the investigations, to which the player replied: “I laugh because I don’t give a damn, the woman was completely drunk, she doesn’t even know what happened.”

However, in this Saturday’s interview Robinho denied having offered alcoholic drink to the woman and questioned the victim’s state of intoxication, although he admitted “not remembering” everything that happened that night. “When she approached me, she was not intoxicated, even because she remembers my name, remembers who I am. The person who drinks does not remember anything. She remembers,” he said.

Likewise, the player maintained that the girl was not abused because she accompanied her alleged attackers to another party. “The fact that she went out later to another disco with the guys, it shows that she was not abused,” he said. “The person who receives abuse, I never received or anyone in my family, thank God, which is something very serious, she would never leave there to go to another place with those same boys,” he added.

Robinho also lamented the existence “of that feminist movement” and the repercussion of the conversations, which were echoed by the main Brazilian media, as well as on social networks, and that led to the suspension of his signing for Santos. “Unfortunately, there is this feminist movement. Many women sometimes are not even women, to speak in plain Portuguese,” he said. “I am married, if I go out on the street and a woman calls me ‘handsome’ or ‘nice guy’, it has a connotation. If I say something to you (the interviewer) with disrespect, it is totally different,” he added .