Spanish court gives Brazil’s Alves 4-1/2 years for sexual assault

BARCELONA: Brazilian footballer Dani Alves was sentenced to four and a half years in prison on Thursday for sexually assaulting a woman in a Barcelona nightclub in 2022.

The top court in Spain’s Catalonia region also ordered Alves, who had maintained throughout that the sex was consensual, to pay 150,000 euros ($163,000) to the victim.

“The sentence considers that it has been proven that the victim did not consent, and that there is evidence, in addition to the testimony of the plaintiff, to consider the rape proven,” the court - the Audiencia Provincial de Barcelona - said in a statement.

The prosecutor had sought a nine-year prison term for Alves. The verdict can be appealed. The 40-year-old former Barcelona defender was arrested in January last year and has been held on remand since then.

The case has attracted significant attention not only because of Alves’ profile but because gender violence has become an increasingly dominant topic in Spain’s public discourse.