Top Santos signed, now suspended, contract with former Braziliandelantero convicted of rape in Italy in 2017
Last game October 22, 2020 10. 02 BST
A public debate about sexual violence and rape culture erupted in Brazil after one of its major football clubs tried to recruit a convicted rapist to carry out his attack.
Santos Futebol Clube, who has produced sports legends such as Pelé and Neymar, announced on 10 October the disputed signing of former Manchester City cruiser Robinho.
The resolve to return the 36-year-old to the club where he began his high-level career came after he was convicted in 2017 for participating in a group rape in Italy in 2013. Robinho, who opposes the conviction, is attractive. , sentenced in absentia to nine years and suspended until the end of the appeal procedure.
Amid a wave of public anger, Santos President Orlando Rollo defended Robinho, who had been the victim of inhuman “moral stoning. “”Everyone judges Robinho but no one has read the sentence. “
However, while Rollo was speaking, a Brazilian journalist in Milan was busy unraging an Italian judge’s 2017 ruling on the nightclub attack, the main points of which had not been published in the past.
The ruling included court-reviewed transcripts of a series of shocking exchanges captured through police investigators who were tracking Robinho’s phone and car.
When excerpts of those intercepted messages were published in Globo Esporte on Friday morning, they painted a damning picture of Robinho’s behavior.
In a message to a friend, Robinho refers to the assault, which took place in January 2013, saying, “I laugh because I don’t care, the absolutely drunk woman, has no idea what happened. “
In another talk, Robinho, who was playing for AC Milan at the time, insisted that he had not had sex with the victim, an Albanian woman in her early twenties.
“I saw you when you put your penis in his mouth,” his friend replied, to which the footballer replied, “That doesn’t mean having sex. “
The messages provoked additional outrage in Brazil and made Robinho’s return to Santos insufferable after the sponsors’ revolt.
Later on Friday, the striker announced the suspension of his contract and claimed that he was being persecuted through the “demonic” press as Brazil’s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro.
“Look what they did to Bolsonaro . . . by telling him that Bolsonaro this and that, which is a racist, a fascist, a murderer, and the more they went for Bolsonaro, the more popular he became,” Robinho said.
In an interview with Brazilian media outlet UOL, he insisted that he was “totally innocent” and warned that some of the messages had been mistranslated or taken out of context.
Robinho, who claims that her “contact” was consensual, also blamed feminists for her plight, telling an interviewer, “Unfortunately, there is this feminist movement . . . many women who aren’t even women. “
Outrage over Robinho’s movements, and what many see as Santos to downplay his crime, came when new figures highlighted the scale of Brazil’s sexual violence crisis.
The Brazilian Public Safety Forum said that last year 66,123 violations were reported, one every 8 minutes, almost 86% of the victims were women and 60% under the age of 14.
Ana Paula Araújo, from a new e-book called Abuse: Rape Culture in Brazil, said these shocking figures were just the tip of the iceberg, as 90% of crimes are not reported.
“It is a genuine and silent scourge, because many women normalize this [abuse], just like men. Society thinks so . . . Sexual abuse isn’t that bad. And that’s why we continue to live in this culture that allows all those other types of abuse to be practiced in front of all of us, each and every day. “
Television journalist Ara-jo called Santos’ resolution on Robinho “disgusting. “
“What struck me most in this case is the general absence of dishonor that this wonderful Brazilian club . . . demonstrated by signing a guy convicted of rape. He didn’t just accuse. He has already been condemned — and his signature was celebrated with pomp and circumstance. “
Araújo said that Robinho’s intercepted messages perfectly reflect his desire to spread the “toxic” culture of rape. “He’s not a scoundrel himself, and that’s a pretty common mentality here in Brazil. “