Jenni Hermoso has taken the step. The player had it in her mind that a complaint against the former president of the Royal Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) would succeed. The public ministry had already announced that without the soccer player’s complaint for the non-consensual kiss of Luis Rubiales during the celebration as World Cup champions in Australia, the procedure for an alleged crime of sexual assault could not continue.
Hermoso took a few days to make the decision to act against his then president, but he has finally done so. Before returning to Mexico where she plays in the women’s league, she went to the State Attorney General’s Office to ratify her latest statement in which she assured that after Rubiales’s kiss she felt “vulnerable and victim of aggression, an impulsive, macho act.” , out of place and without any kind of consent on my part.
The prosecutor has already announced that she will file the corresponding complaint against Rubiales for an alleged crime of sexual assault as soon as possible. The Prosecutor’s Office’s objective is to make the period as short as possible to avoid Hermoso’s “excessive exposure” to “media pressure.”
Rubiales’ non-consensual kiss has gone around the world and for which it has even been pronounced at the UN. The Government itself, led by Pedro Sánchez, requested Rubiales’ resignation for the act, together with other behaviors that same day, such as making a gesture of grabbing his testicles while Queen Letizia and the princess were next to him.
A lukewarm initial statement from Rubiales together with his press conference in which he categorically opposed resigning, arguing a version of events very different from that offered by Hermoso, has definitively blown up the entire case.
The player explained in an official press release that Rubiales’ version during the press conference at the RFEF was “categorically false.” According to the former manager, in the midst of euphoria for having won the World Cup final, he asked her: “A little bit?”, to which she nodded.
Hermoso denies it categorically and emphatically. However, although Rubiales will refuse to resign, in a bizarre press conference with his daughters and father present, both national and international pressure, as well as the actions of FIFA and the Sports Administrative Tribunal (TAD) have done the rest for remove him from the federation. This case has not left anyone indifferent, from the kiss itself, Rubiales’ explanations to the scene of his mother locked in a church in Motril (Granada) on a hunger strike so that Hermoso “told the truth.”
While these scenes were taking place, the Prosecutor’s Office was accumulating up to four complaints for an alleged crime of sexual assault. Hermoso was yet to speak. Without the victim’s complaint, the Prosecutor’s Office found itself with its hands tied, in events that were also added to the complexity of the fact that they had occurred abroad, specifically in Australia, and therefore fall under the jurisdiction of the National Court. .
The sources of the Prosecutor’s Office confirm that after Hermoso’s statement, the complaint will be filed, which will be distributed to one of the six central investigating judges of the National Court. Once the proceedings have been opened and the statement from Hermoso and Rubiales has been taken, the instructor will have to decide if the kiss that everyone is talking about falls within the type of aggression or, however, is considered a “kiss” -a respectful kiss. or affection-.
The Prosecutor’s Office circular to act in similar events, based on the law of yes means yes, explains that “surprise or fleeting touching of erogenous zones is worthy of criminal reproach, even when carried out over clothing; kisses on the mouth, although not the so-called kisses; or touching non-erogenous zones when the circumstances of the case justify considering an attack against sexual freedom.”
Legal sources explain that in the event that a criminal process is finally initiated, which could lead to a fine and even a prison sentence, the administrative process opened in the TAD would be suspended due to the principle of ‘non bis in idem’, due to which that there cannot be two different procedures for the same fact.
