Football – Prison sentence confirmed for Robinho

PostedJanuary 19, 2022, 7:26 PM

The former Brazilian player will have to serve nine years in prison for rape. His appeal was rejected on Wednesday by the Italian Court of Cassation.

Robinho for Atletico Mineiro in 2017

AFP

The Italian Court of Cassation on Wednesday upheld the nine-year prison sentence for gang rape handed down to Brazilian footballer Robinho (37), the victim’s lawyer said.

The judges of the third criminal section, meeting in Rome, “considered that the appeal lodged by the player was inadmissible and that the conviction is therefore final,” the victim’s lawyer, Jacopo Gnocchi, told the press. “A total of fifteen Italian magistrates considered that the charges had been amply proven. Our wish is that Brazil carries out the sentence,” he added.

Unconscious victim

According to Italian media, the player is currently in Brazil. The facts date back to January 2013, when Robinho was playing at AC Milan. According to media at the time, Robinho and five of his friends allegedly made a 22-year-old Albanian woman drink “to the point of rendering her unconscious and unable to resist”. They would then have had “multiple and consecutive sexual relations” with her.

A court in the Lombard city had found him guilty in 2017 of gang rape on this young woman and sentenced him to nine years in prison. This sentence had been confirmed by an appeal court in December 2020. Robinho had already been briefly arrested in England in 2009, suspected of having raped a woman in a nightclub in Leeds.

(AFP)