“I was subjected to something that I did not seek.” This is how forceful Jennifer Hermoso, player of the Spanish women’s soccer team, was during her statement before the Prosecutor’s Office after the kiss that Luis Rubiales, now former president of the RFEF, gave her during the trophy presentation at the World Cup in Sydney.
The soccer player’s statement was broadcast in full in a Code 10 special last night on Telecinco. And it was done by also showing the coercion and pressure to which she was subjected by Rubiales, but also by his entire team. There were four key moments of harassment in this story, until now unknown. And one of them occurred on the bus to the airport where they stopped the vehicle and made the player get off so she could sign a statement.
The broadcast of Jenni Hermoso’s statement before the Prosecutor’s Office on Telecinco brings to the table the pressure that the player suffered after Rubiales’ kiss, both from the person who was president of the RFEF, but also from her own team.
One of the most striking happened on that bus ride to the airport, after the World Cup celebration in the locker room. This is where for the first time Rubiales strongly asks the player to help him. Failing to do so, the pressure continues, this time from within the Federation.
“When we are on the bus, I tell my classmate Alexia who is getting involved with this. How could I imagine that she was talking about that and not that we had been world champions,” Hermoso told the Prosecutor. Then, during that journey, “the bus stops, there is a deadly silence and they start to tell me to get off quickly,” he said. A fact unknown until now.
The soccer player confirmed that the person who tells her to get off the bus is the Rubiales team: “I got off, they showed me a piece of writing that I didn’t say a word about. They told me: ‘We have to put that in because it’s getting a lot complicated and we have to take the issue down’. I said, ‘Why do I have to do this?'” And at her insistence, she answered them with “do what you want.”
Regarding the content of the statement written by the Rubiales team so that Hermoso could sign it as if the words were his own, the player noted: “I don’t remember very well what the text said, which was a moment of euphoria, of joy, This has no major consequence or anything like that, but I repeat that I did not say any word of that writing.”
And, then, she pointed directly to the person who showed her the aforementioned statement: “Patricia Pérez, press officer of the women’s team, showed it to me. At all times I said that they didn’t have to do it and that they could do whatever they wanted. I was feeling like I was obligated to do something. “I felt coerced.”
