Luis Rubiales, who resigned as Spain’s most sensible football reliable after he forcibly kissed a participant, testified at his sexual attack trial on Tuesday that he did in order an indication of love in “a scenario of abnormal pleasure.”
Mr. Rubiales has additionally been charged with coercion in reference to the episode, wherein he pressed a kiss at the participant, Jennifer Hermoso, at the box throughout the medal rite after Spain gained the 2023 Ladies’s International Cup.
Mr. Rubiales denied doing the rest unsuitable throughout the come upon with Ms. Hermoso. Talking in a court docket close to Madrid, he stated, “You don’t win a International Cup each day,” and he added that he had kissed different avid gamers in celebratory moments.
He additionally stated that he had requested for permission prior to kissing Ms. Hermoso, describing it as a peck. “I requested her, ‘Can I come up with a little bit kiss?’ and he or she stated, ‘OK,’” he advised a prosecutor. Ms. Hermoso said shortly after the episode that “at no time did I consent to the kiss that he gave me.”
“I couldn’t react — it was once 1000th of a 2nd,” she later testified, including that she had recognized in an instant that the act was once no longer customary.
“My boss was once kissing me,” she stated. “This will have to no longer occur.”
The kiss, and the following fallout, was a second of reckoning within the nation in addition to within the recreation, pitting a tradition of machismo towards newer development in gender equality in Spanish football.
Mr. Rubiales, 47, faces two and a part years in jail if convicted. 3 different males, together with Jorge Vilda, the team’s coach at the World Cup, are accused of coercion, with prosecutors announcing that they harassed Ms. Hermoso to drop her declare and downplay the incident. Each and every may just face 18 months.
The trial opened closing week with the testimony of Ms. Hermoso, 34, who described the kiss as the instant that “ruined one of the crucial happiest days of my existence.”
Ms. Hermoso, who performs in Mexico, additionally testified that prime football officers had harassed her to mention that Mr. Rubiales had accomplished not anything unsuitable.
Ms. Hermoso was once left off the Spain group after the episode, however on Monday the present head trainer of the Spain ladies’s group, Montse Tomé, testified that Ms. Hermoso’s exclusion “was once no longer a punishment.”
Ms. Tomé, who was the group’s trainer in September 2023 after Mr. Vilda was once fired, seemed on the courtroom close to Madrid as a witness for the protection.
In August 2023, Ms. Tomé and 10 different contributors of the Spain ladies’s training workforce revealed a collective remark condemning Mr. Rubiales’s “unacceptable attitudes and movements.”
Ms. Tomé’s appointment as Mr. Vilda’s successor, alternatively, was once noticed by way of some as a continuation of the previous management. She had labored with Mr. Vilda as his assistant and ordered avid gamers to wait coaching camp. She was once additionally seen by players as providing little sensible strengthen for Ms. Hermoso and ignoring requires structural alternate within the football federation.
Ms. Hermoso, throughout her testimony, stated that the federation had all however deserted her after her court cases. She stated that officers sought after simplest “to avoid wasting their popularity.”
Within the quick aftermath of the kiss, Mr. Rubiales introduced a tepid apology and resisted calls to surrender. The Spanish football federation launched a remark that quoted Ms. Hermoso calling the kiss “a wholly spontaneous mutual gesture.” Throughout her testimony, Ms. Hermoso stated that she had by no means authorized the remark.
Amid mounting force and waning strengthen, Mr. Rubiales resigned as head of the nationwide football group, the Royal Spanish Soccer Federation, in September 2023.