On a warm October day in Las Vegas, we slip our car into a parking lot wedgedbetween two buildings, then push open the door to the lawyer's office. My colleague,Nicole Noren, and I figure this will be simple. We are in Nevada reporting on the rapeallegations against Cristiano Ronaldo, and we want to meet Ronaldo's attorneys, as wellas the lawyers representing Kathryn Mayorga, the woman accusing him.
Normally, this sort of meeting is pretty straightforward for journalists. Lawyers,particularly those who do a lot of personal injury work in places with no shortage ofclients like Las Vegas, almost always have a strong perspective on a case and aregenerally happy to tell you all about it. When those clients are celebrities and the casesare in the public eye, that chattiness-on the record or on background-is amped upeven more.
We have seen news reports that a lawyer named Peter Christiansen is representingRonaldo, though we have not confirmed this, and even if it is true, we are not sure whichPeter Christiansen-there is a Peter J. and a Peter S. in this office. We find theChristiansen Law Offices down the street from a bail bondsman and a wedding chapel.We go inside and, seeing no receptionist or secretary, follow a sign for "Christiansen"down a hall.
We step into an office where two women and a man are sitting. We identifyourselves and ask if we can either talk to or make an appointment with one of theChristiansens. The women physically recoil.
"You have to leave right now," one of them replies. Her voice rises. "You're notallowed to be here. You have to go. You have to go."
She is frantic. I explain that there is no one at the front desk area so we'd decided towalk back. I ask if we can leave a message or even just confirm which Peter Christiansenis Ronaldo's lawyer. The woman becomes more animated. "You need to leave right now!"she says. "I can call the police if I need to."
We back away, confused. "A lawyer won't even confirm he is representingsomeone? That's never happened to me before," I say to Nicole as we walk to the car.She nods. "Never for me either."
The whole thing feels strange. We look over our shoulders and see the woman fromthe office watching us as we leave. She peers out the door as we drive away.
THERE IS A lot that feels unusual about this case: the circumstancessurrounding the alleged crime, the start-stop-start-again police investigation, the fallout(or lack thereof) that comes with the world's most famous athlete being accused ofcommitting a violent sex crime.
A big part of this is the timeline. According to Mayorga, Ronaldo raped her in theearly hours of June 13, 2009, after she and a friend met him at a club and spent part ofthe previous evening together. Mayorga, then 25, reported the assault to Las Vegaspolice that afternoon. She did not identify Ronaldo by name at that time, she says,because he was a public figure and she felt intimidated. She was taken to a hospital andhad a rape kit examination.
In the following months, according to Mayorga's attorneys, private investigators hiredby Ronaldo's European lawyers trailed her and recorded her movements. She alsoclaims that Ronaldo's lawyers, working with private investigators and crisis consultants,pushed for an out-of-court settlement that would require her to drop all charges; theyalso tried, she says, to use that potential outcome to dissuade police from investigating.Ultimately, Mayorga signed a nondisclosure agreement with Ronaldo's team in January2010. She received roughly $375,000, and police closed the investigation.
More than seven years later, in 2017, German magazine Der Spiegelpublished a story about an alleged rape committed by Ronaldo, without namingMayorga. Much of the information for the story came from emails, memos anddocuments Der Spiegel received from a computer hacking group known as FootballLeaks, a website primarily focused on exposing the murky underworld of internationalsoccer business transactions and relationships.
Ronaldo's agent denied and discredited the report, saying that the documents wereobtained illegally and claiming it was illegal for Der Spiegel to publish on the subject. Ayear and a half later, in September 2018,Der Spiegelpublished another report onthe case, this time naming and interviewing Mayorga. In that story, she described, in graphic detail, how Ronaldo assaulted and anally raped her, as well as her years ofsuffering in the aftermath. Der Spiegel also unearthed a trove of documents related tothe case, again obtained via Football Leaks, including one in which Ronaldo describedthe encounter to his lawyer as "rude" and admitted Mayorga "said no and stop severaltimes."
Ronaldo's European attorneys have denied the allegations and questioned thedocuments' authenticity. Around the same time, Las Vegas police reopened theirinvestigation into the alleged act, eight years after closing it. (In Nevada, the statute oflimitations on rape cases is 20 years.) Mayorga, meanwhile, announced later inSeptember that she is suing Ronaldo. Her new lawyer, a man named Leslie Stovall,contends that the documents detailing what happened in the aftermath of the allegedrape show an attempted and improper cover-up. The intimidation of Mayorga byRonaldo's private investigators and their interactions with police while the case was beinginvestigated were designed to "prevent or delay criminal prosecution," Stovall told DerSpiegelin October, adding that "hiding a crime is a crime."
Stovall also told Der Spiegel that the original nondisclosure agreement is notvalid for many reasons, including Ronaldo's failure to comply with parts of it. Mostnotably, Stovall believes that correspondence between Ronaldo's agents and lawyersshows that a letter Mayorga wrote to Ronaldo after the settlement was reached-inwhich she describes her pain and upbraids him-was never read to Ronaldo, despitethat being a requirement of the agreement.
Presumably, all of this is a massive development-only it isn't. Stovall holds a newsconference on Oct. 3 at his tiny offices on the outskirts of Las Vegas and livestreams it(with dodgy audio) on his firm's Facebook page. The volume of news coverage aroundthe world is hardly overwhelming, and social media is surprisingly muted.
This dissonance is jarring, particularly when one considers the base reality: Themost famous player in the world's most popular sport has been accused of doingsomething that, should he be convicted, could mean a life sentence in prison. (Rape is aCategory A felony in Nevada.)
This is more than gossip, more than a misunderstanding. The stakes are real, andeveryone waits to see what will happen next.
Except ... nothing does.
IT'S BEEN MORE than five months since Stovall announced Mayorga'slawsuit and the police reopened their investigation. There has been no announcementabout whether charges will be filed against Ronaldo, no update on whether the policehave discovered anything that makes them believe officers were compromised during theinitial investigation. Police did request a DNA sample from Ronaldo, which is commonand, since Ronaldo's team doesn't deny that there was a sexual encounter, notnecessarily that damaging.
It is a disquieting limbo. While Mayorga, according to her attorneys, is still battlingdepression related to the alleged assault and has spent many weeks away from home inNevada to avoid the media crush, Ronaldo has not faced any significant fallout. Hecontinues to score goals and post photos of his family, his team celebrations and hisimpeccable physique on Instagram to his 156.3 million followers. His main Americansponsors-Nike and EA Sports-made statements expressing concern about theallegations but took no substantive action.
Ronaldo's club is steadfast in its support. Juventus, an Italian club looking to keep upwith more popular, wealthier teams in England and Spain, broke the league transferrecord to sign Ronaldo last July and, even with a rape accusation dangling over its newstar, basks in his fame: Shares are up; millions of fans are latching on to the club's socialplatforms; ticket and jersey sales are soaring.
Initially, it seemed as though Ronaldo thought this would simply go away. In anInstagram Live post shortly after the lawsuit was announced, he casually describedMayorga's allegations as "fake news" and said it was "normal" that someone would"wanna be famous-to say my name." He added that situations like this are "part of thejob."
Ronaldo kept with that theme when he released a more standard statement a fewdays later in which he denied raping Mayorga and said rape is "an abominable crime,"adding, "I refuse to feed the media spectacle created by people seeking to promotethemselves at my expense. My clear [conscience] will thereby allow me to await withtranquillity the results of any and all investigations."
That last part might be a clue to his legal team's approach: running the clock. Whilethe criminal investigation slogs on, Mayorga's civil suit against Ronaldo has stalled aswell. That is primarily because Ronaldo has still not officially been served notice of thelawsuit. Serving a lawsuit to someone who lives abroad is a tricky process that requiresfollowing rules set forth in international treaties, and Ronaldo has not authorized hisAmerican attorney to accept on his behalf. Peter S. Christiansen, who has not returnedESPN's calls and messages since the visit to his office, isn't even listed as an attorney ofrecord in the court's digital filing of Mayorga's lawsuit. That space is blank.
Stovall and his associates have been unsuccessful serving Ronaldo in Italy. Theinitial 120-day period expired at the beginning of February, and Stovall has filed a motionasking the court to grant an extension and to allow service by leaving the paperwork atJuventus' training center or via public notification (publishing the lawsuit in Las Vegasand Turin newspapers in lieu of handing Ronaldo a copy). According to portions of themotion published by the Daily Mail, an English tabloid, the Italian process server hiredby Stovall spent several months trying to serve Ronaldo but was stymied at every turn.At one point, per the motion, the server reported that Juventus players are treated "likeroyalty" in Turin, making it nearly impossible to access Ronaldo. From Ronaldo'sperspective, that is presumably the idea.
"A rich defendant can wear down a plaintiff with lesser means," says Abed Awad, anattorney and legal commentator with experience in international law. "It's a delayingtactic, and it's a calculated strategy. Sometimes it works, sometimes it backfires."
Maybe, at some point, there will be a criminal charge. Maybe, at some point, the civilcase will proceed. For now, only dribs and drabs tumble out, barely registering beneaththe regular cacophony of a famous athlete's buzz: Ronaldo's mother said she believesMayorga knew when she went to Ronaldo's hotel that it "wasn't to play cards." A formergirlfriend of Ronaldo's has said she was bullied and threatened by him. (After speakingwith her, Stovall says he doesn't see a helpful connection.) In January, Ronaldo had adifferent brush with the law, this time in Spain, where he settled a tax evasion chargestemming from his time at Real Madrid. Meanwhile, the rape case is in limbo.
This, it seems, is the reality of fame. The type of fame Ronaldo enjoys means power-the power to hide in plain sight, to appear on screens in every country every weekendyet avoid being served. Ronaldo might not be above the law, but he can surroundhimself with a protective layer of lawyers, private investigators and fixers so thick he canhover above it for a lot longer than most.
And so, Ronaldo continues to score goals. Juventus continues to thrive. AndMayorga, with her scars now bared to all the world, continues to wait.
This story appears in ESPN The Magazine's (April World Fame 100) Issue. Subscribe today!